| What: Feedback by Andrew Buckland When: August 7-30, 2025 at 8pm, with Saturday matinees at 2.30pm Where: Baxter Studio, Cape Town Bookings: Webtickets Director: Andrew Buckland Assistant director: Roshina Ratnam Lighting design: Franky Steyn Set and costumes: Roshina Ratnam and the production team Cast: The Baxter’s Fires Burning company: Carlo Daniels, Awethu Hleli, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe and Lyle October |
Andrew Buckland’s play, Feedback, is deliciously cheesy, a biting satirical caper and physical theatre feast. Direction is by Buckland, with assistant direction by Roshina Ratnam. Feedback is on August 7-30, 2025 in the Baxter Studio.
Feedback is performed by the Baxter’s resident company -The Fires Burning. Brilliant physical comedy by the performers, Carlo Daniels, Awethu Hleli, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe and Lyle October Company member Tamzin Daniels is on maternity leave.
Buckland first performed the play solo in 1994. It was subsequently staged as a two hander with Buckland and Lionel Newton. And now here we are in 2025. Buckland told me that the text has remained the same, in essence but has been added to by the cast. The argot is very Cape Town in terms of the vernacular. The performers have huge fun and so does the audience. We roared with laughter. There was an appreciative standing ovation.
The play munches into the sociology and politics of food – with two orphans who have survived a famine and who are adopted by Myrth (Mother Mirth?). They learn to grow their own food through permaculture but then it all crumbles. There is murder, mayhem, with wacky detectives – Detective Deadly and Detective Serious – chasing after the villains. There is lots of cheese – talking cheese, flying cheese.
Cheese sparked the play. In the programme, Buckland notes: “One day I overheard two packers in ta supermarket, having a conversation and the one asked the other ‘how are the cheeses doing?’ to which his colleague replied, ‘they are flying off the shelf’ …”This got me thinking about the sociology and governance of food – how, while some people are feasting, others are dying of starvation…Unpacking those few words led to the genesis of Feedback.” In a radio interview with Clarence Ford on Cape Talk, Buckland explained that when he was writing the play, in the early 90s, “we were heading towards democracy and cheese was flying of the shelves.” Reading that and I was reminded how people were stockpiling food, with the Covid pandemic and impending lockdown – well – those who had the means to do so. In Feedback, food is controlled by the Dearth Foodstuff Multinational.
Delicious word play in Feedback by Buckland – impaling us on food puns and gags. It is hilarious. Laugh and cry – a River of Tears of Joy. Amidst the fun and mirth of Feedback, the hilarity become menacing. I am plot spoiling so skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know. Buckland crunches right into cannibalism. This is not palatable to contemplate. We shudder at that thought, of course, but if you are starving and there is no other food source, what do you do? Self-distribution and self-determination becomes key to survival in a depraved world. When I googled cannibalism on Wikipedia, this came up: “Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species“ It is “normal” in the plant kingdom.
I loved the design. The set is comprised of plastic screens conjuring up a cold room or abattoir. The performers are garbed in chef like attire – zushed up with a sprinkling of clown – accessorized with dish cloths as wrist/sweat bands and as neck wear (throttling?). Marbling on the floor looks like slabs of meat. The plastic sheeting of the cold room looks like tin sheeting of shacks. Set and costumes by Roshina Ratnam and the production team. The lighting (Franky Steyn) and plastic screens frame the action on the marbled floor, containing it visually and theatrically. This play provides space for the company to flex its physical theatre smarts – morphing between characters and situations. However, there is a fine balance and the narrative of this important story does not get lost in the physical theatre which is testament to the finely tuned direction by Buckland and Ratnam.
Food warning: This play makes you hungry, ravenous. I went home starving and ate cheese and pickles.
✳ Feedback by Andrew Buckland, performed by The Baxter’s Fires Burning company, Baxter Studio. August 7-30, 202. Pic: Fiona MacPherson
