Review: Gripping theatre, Jan Glazewski’s Blood and Silver on stage

What: Blood & Silver Starring: David Muller Directed and designed by: Fred Abrahamse Script: Based on the memoir by environmental lawyer Jan Glazewski. The stage adaption is by Abrahamse and Muller   When: July 8-12, 2025 Where: Baxter Masambe, Cape Town Bookings: Webtickets

I was captivated and charmed by Blood and Silver, the stage adaptation of the memoir of the same name by Jan Glazewski, performed by David Muller and directed and designed by Fred Abrahamse. The stage show has been adapted by Muller and Abrahamse, from Glazewski’s memoir. Blood and Silver and is on July 8-12, 2025 in the Baxter Masambe.

Muller held my attention from beginning to end as he evokes Glazewski’s story of “blood” and “silver”. The blood refers to his lifelong condition of haemophilia and also becoming infected with HIV, through a blood transfusion, used to treat his haemophilia. The silver is the family silver and heirlooms which were buried by his parents in Poland (now part of Ukraine), before they fled war, seeking refuge elsewhere. His parents eventually ended up in South Africa.  We hear about the “indignity” that his dad carried “with quiet bitterness,” as a result of having to work for others in South Africa, far removed from being a well-off landowner in his home country.

Seventy minutes goes by in a flash and that is not easy in monologue theatre. It is witness and memory theatre – an intriguing story on stage – shared with an audience. It is like we are guests of Glazewski, in his living room, experiencing his story and holding our breath as we watch as the dots are connected by him.

Abrahamse’s stage design, images structures of neurons and nerves – connecting and mapping the dots of Glazewski’s quest for treasure in reclaiming family legacy. Blood and silver are the life lines, leitmotifs running through Glazewski’s story – which includes displacement, exile, identity, family, health, mortality and resilience. Land and dispossession (his parents lost their land when they had to flee) are vivid strands. It is fascinating to learn about Glazewski’s career as an environmental lawyer and academic and his passion and commitment to nurturing land rights in South Africa.

I loved the theatricality in the staging, with Muller embodying Glazewski, pacing the stage, echoing the treasure hunt, when he went on to his ancestral home – once Poland – now Ukraine. 

Muller, channelling Glazewski, shares nuggets of portraits of people that he meets along the way, metal detectors found at all odds and the quirky custodians of the detectors. Lovely humour. Family is the real treasure in the story- the family he reunites with such as his late mom’s sister – a replica of his mom. There is also a deep awareness and gratitude for one’s health.   Glazewski was diagnosed as HIV+ in 1985, when he was 33. He was told that he had around four years to live. He is now 73 (2025). Throughout Blood and Silver and the hunt for the family treasure, Glazewski’s anxiety of his precarious health is palpable. He ponders whether he is physically (and emotionally) up to the task of the treasure hunt. Would there be blood clotting agents available if required, in a place, far away from his home in South Africa?

Muller says in the programme notes that the script has gone through ten drafts. The care is evident in the impeccably crafted script which deftly joins the dots in Glazewski’s rambling family tree, intersecting with his health, career as an environmental lawyer and his romantic and family relationships.  On the subject of the family tree – it is huge. His mom died when he was young and his dad remarried and had more children. Glazewski has 14 siblings! That is a lot. Muller weaves it all together – names, places, family ties, Glazewski growing up in Apartheid South Africa. Within all that, is I think there is a beautiful sense of Glazewski reclaiming aspects of feeling untethered in his life by the death of his mom when he was young and the ghosts dangling in the country of his parents and the stuff that they left behind. It was important for Glazewski to carry out his father’s wishes and go back to excavate the treasure. There is a sense of reparation, healing and closure in the play which goes beyond monetary and physical retrieval – a deep drill – digging into emotional restitution and embracing happiness and gratitude.

✳ Featured image of David Muller by Fiona MacPherson. Supplied.