| What: Bitter Winter by Paul Slabolepszy When: May 21 to June 14, 2025 Where: The Golden Arrow Studio, Baxter, Cape Town Bookings: Webtickets Director: Lesedi Job Performers: André Odendaal, Oarabile Ditsele and Chantal Stanfield Producer: Weslee Lauder Lighting designer: Oliver Hauser Sound designer: Sne Dladla Set and costume designer: Frankie van Straten Stage manager: Yvette Hanekom |
Paul Slabolepszy’s new play, Bitter Winter, on in the Baxter Studio until June 14, 2025, is a beautiful, moving ode to the resilience in the theatre industry and the struggles to make art. It is a lament, a howl at how thespians tend to battle financially – particularly when they are older and don’t have adequate savings and pensions – and they face the bitter winter of their lives. It is a play about rejection; that talent doesn’t necessarily bring rewards. This heart breaking play makes for engrossing theatre. Tender and sensitive direction by Lesedi Job and wonderful ensemble work by the cast: André Odendaal, Oarabile Ditsele and Chantal Stanfield. Lighting is by Oliver Hauser, sound by Sne Dladla and set and costume by Frankie van Straten.
The theatre industry is gruelling. Award winning does not pay the rent and bills. Odendaal delivers a knock-out performance as Jean-Louis Lourens, a grumpy 70-something white Afrikaans thespian who is badly frayed around the edges – physically and emotionally. On the bare bones of his existence living in a hokkie of a backyard (his landlord his “agent”), he is in the reception /waiting room of a casting agency, for a call-back for a part as a sheriff in an American movie. It is a part that he desperately needs to nab. With him in the waiting room is Prosper Mangane (Ditsele), high flying young Black A-lister who has is coining it in film and in commercials. He is a Star. He is Famous. He has money and influence. Making her exits and entrances is the casting director, Felicia Willemse (Chantal Stanfield) who keeps them in the picture, regarding the arrival of the American film director who will play God as to whether they get the parts.
On the face of it, the play is about the human condition that unites stage actors in South Africa and worldwide. When 70 something thespians, were starting out, there was no internet, social media, Series and Netflix. It was another time and another country. Yes, it is a generational thing but buttressed with this play is the intersections within our country, Apartheid South Africa. In Bitter Winter, for me the choices that Slabolepszy has made as writer speaks volumes about our complicated history in this country and the theatre industry.
Slabolepszy specified in his script – an older white Afrikaans speaking actor and a young Black actor – facing off each other and bonding in the casting room. It would have for example been a very different play if race was unspecified and Dr John Kani for instance, playing the role of the older actor. Race is the Elephant in the room. We may protest that it is not important, that it is immaterial when we are in the same waiting room at the casting house. However, our histories shape who we are and Slabolepszy is not shying away from confronting the intricacies but he does so subtly, from a place of huge respect.
Watching this play, the echo of generational privilege lingers in the character of Jean-Louis Lourens, the white male who had so many opportunities under Apartheid. With all that, he has not prepared for his dotage and relies on stipends from the TBF (Theatre Benevolent Fund- a fund which assists actors in need in South Africa). He relies on the kindness of others. Slabolepszy’s Black A-lister Prosper Mangane also speaks volumes in how the industry has changed. However, in the New South Africa, Apartheid era divisions are still embedded. Prosper is emblematic of the layering of the past over the present which Slabolepszy evokes vividly with this character. Nuanced and powerful performance by Ditsele. It makes for a muscular characterisation pitting the younger and older man generations together, against the palimpsest of the lingering past. We see the past imaged through mementoes and photos on the walls of the waiting room, paying tribute to theatre stars in South Africa – such as John Kani. (Set and costume design by Frankie van Straten.)
Director Lesedi Job was an actor before shifting into directing and she brings in a sensitive rendering of the way Felicia, the casting agent is caught between the two men, jittery and not quite sure where to put herself and place herself in the waiting room. This is the first production of the play and it lays an important imprint for future productions. The inclusion of a Black voice as director, as a storyteller is important and necessary.
We attended on a cold Cape Town night. The rain was belting down. The thudding of the rain heightened the elegiac mood of this story. I commented about the rain on Instagram and Stanfield replied that the rain was like a 4th actor. Yes, I agree. Bitter Winter is a three-hander but it reverberates with the voices of thespians in the industry – past and present. The play segues into the whims of the film industry in changing casting up to the last minute and the waiting to hear if one has been chosen – or rejected.
I loved Bitter Winter and urge anyone who loves theatre, its immediacy, intimacy and power to tell stories to go and see it. It is distinctly South African and universal. A shout-out to producer Wesler Lauder and his dedication to staging independent theatre. He premiered the play in Joburg and brought it to Cape Town and that takes grit to stage theatre in the bitter winter in our city, when it is not easy to get audiences into theatres.
✳ André Odendaal in Bitter Winter by Paul Slabolepszy, Baxter, Cape Town, May 21 to June 14, 2025. The play premiered in Johannesburg (February-March 2025). Pic: Supplied.
