Review: Thank you for your Service, brilliant script and physically charged performances

What of all the young men and their service to their country? What do they get after the battles have been fought and blood has been shed?  At the end, no-one cares. Thank you for your Service is set in the township of Gugulethu, Cape Town but it reverberates universally. Men – it is still predominantly men – fight for their country and on their return – besides from lip-service – ‘thank you for your service’ – war veterans are generally left to try and pick up the pieces of interrupted lives. As it is uttered in the play, “soldiers are only honoured once they are no more.” If one is ‘lucky’, there is a military funeral. In this play, we see a son, following the trajectory of his father’s “service” and the rupture and trauma that ensues in the wake of his service.

Thank you for your Service is compelling and disturbing theatre with a brilliant  script and intensely charged physical performance. The striking set – with blood splattered floor and caged wire enclosure is brutal. It is also alluring and beautiful, with a purple haze of blue-purple haze of lighting as we enter the Baxter Masambe, beckoning us in to this landscape of splatter. See photo on this page. The Masambe Theatre is utterly transformed by the installation type set. It feels like we are immersed in a battle field – sitting in it. The performers use parts of the auditorium, getting very close to the audience. They are marching to the beat of the blood splatter that has shaped and shattered their lives – irrevocably.

Thank you for your Service, written and performed by Aphiwe Livi and Buhle Qinga and directed by Bulelani Mabutyana was the Best Script winner at the 2021 Baxter’s Zabalaza Theatre Festival. It also received the Zabalaza Best Director award and was nominated for Best Actor. It was also nominated for a Fleur du Cap Theatre Award for Best New South African Script and Best Performance by an Ensemble.

Somehow, I missed out on seeing this acclaimed play and it was wonderful to get the opportunity now, to see it at the Masambe. It is interesting that “the play was conceived during the first lockdown when the inspiration of the play was born after seeing a movie about ex-military soldiers”. [Baxter Media release]. The caged set conjures up a sense of being locked in – to memories, emotions, broken dreams and relationships. The dialogue is brilliant, with English surtitles giving non isiXhosa speakers a sense of the robust text. I would love to read the play and I see that the script has been published by Junkets Publishers and is on sale at The Baxter. 

Aphiwe Livi and Buhle Qinga, the actors, who devised and wrote the play have dance backgrounds and they charge their performances with a lyricism and beauty which transfigures the horror of the blood splattered stage. Bulelani Mabutyana’s direction is a tour de force in interlacing the rapid fire text with the physical theatre. The protagonists circle around each other; a war dance. The actors play an array of complex characters and texture their performances with poignancy and nuance.  One can see why this play has received its accolades. Do not miss.

✳ Thank you for Your Service, performed and written by Aphiwe Livi and Buhle Qinga, directed by Bulelani Mabutyana, Baxter Masambe, Cape Town September 25 to October 5, 2024. Pic by Star Zwane.