Review: Brilliant play, Droomwerk, cathartic in its honesty, pain and capacity for facing the unresolved and uncomfortable

Pieter Odendaal’s intensely powerful play Droomwerk is on in Cape Town at the Avalon, the Homecoming Centre (where the Fugard was) until May 11, 2024. I urge you to not miss this special piece of theatre. The play is based on the inter-generational trauma in his family and how he found ways to heal some of the unresolved history in his family – through excavating stories and rituals. His complex heritage includes his grandfather – “an apartheid senator in the 1970s – and his ancestral grandmother, Diana of Madagascar, who was brought to the Cape as a slave in the late 17th century.”

Odendaal became cognisant of the suppression in his lineage when he was 18. The narrative unfurls in a mental hospital, with Odendaal curled up in a foetal position, reaching into himself. In the other bed is his grandfather who is justifying what he did and stood for in white South Africa. Odendaal as the protagonist is desperate to break out of his depression, through the chains that fettered him to his family and its delusions and denialism. I don’t want to narrative spoil, but the process of shedding his physical and emotional constraints he is led through cleansing and healing rituals, memory, play, by two nursing sisters. The stories sway between dream and reality, madness, sanity and the juxtaposition of different belief and cultural systems – Western psychiatry over indigenous knowledge. There is the doctor and Odendaal’s father in the frame. It is a lot- the space is weighted by opposing forces. There is the possibility for a healing of sort or at least the ability to confront the past and then to be able to live and not be stuck in a dark space.

Droomwerk is a howl and lament. It is urgent. It is lyrical and threaded with compassion. It is an uncomfortable play, beautifully staged, with superb performances, design (set, costumes, sound.) The two nursing sisters are intricately choreographed as they guide the young man who is grasping for meaning. A measured dance, a slow burn of rituals inhabit the space, freeing him from his demons and the past which is leering into his present. It is a multi-sensory journey of smell, light, and noise

Many White Afrikaner families are white right and upright, meanwhile, beneath the veneer of respectability, rugby, beers, braaiveis and sunny skies, there are unspoken bits of family history which is kept under the table. I think that the play alludes to notions of reconciliation in families when publicly they pander – ja we are cool –we know all that stuff – but it doesn’t have anything to do with us. Glib forgiveness is easy but how do you feel? How does it make you feel when your identity is so far away from the official family tree? Watching this play, I was reminded of the book Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, by American psychologist, Andrew Solomon. There is a general expectation that children will mirror their parents to a degree in a kind of vertical identity but when offspring veer, far from the tree, off the grid (through lifestyle choices, religion, disability and other reasons), this obviously causes extreme friction and they may battle to understand each other.

And yet our shared roots are there, knotted, crunched together. In this play, we hear the crunching of shells; the sounds of the wind and slave ships sailing to the Cape, the incessant beeping of hospital monitors which co-join us in the same space- the sound and fury of wanting to clutch onto those nodes of the family tree. The play leaves one with questions and I won’t narrative spoil. It is an important work – scraping back layers of a family – into a raw raw state and this is heightened by the peeling palimpsest walls in the Avalon Theatre. The ghosts of the past of District Six, of a community that was erased during Apartheid forced removals, are bearing witness in the pitted walls as the play loops around itself. The direction and design by Kanya Viljoen seamlessly dovetails with Pieter Odendaal’s rich and poetic text. Droomwerk is powerful theatre; yes disturbing but it is cathartic in its honesty, pain and capacity for facing, working through the unresolved and uncomfortable.

Viljoen is studying abroad and for this season, assistant director Lwanda Sindaphi, was in the hot seat. Sindaphi’s direction is impeccable- each movement was finely tuned. Both Viljoen and Sindaphi derserve to be nominated as joint directors for this outstanding production which could have been an “issue play” but has theatrically been ignited on stage, resonating in multiple directions.

❇ Featured image – Droomwerk- pic by Gys Loubser.