| What: The Ugly Noo Noo When: July 23 to August 10 2024 Where: Baxter Flipside, Cape Town Writer/performer: Andrew Buckland Director: Janet Buckland Bookings: Webtickets |
Andrew Buckland created and performed The Ugly Noo Noo in 1988, using the onslaught of the ominous Parktown Prawn as a metaphor for a society sliding into fascism. Apartheid South Africa was being led by a government that believed in a total strategy of coordinated military, political and economic policies to hang on to power, and sought to eliminate any threat to that goal. The repulsive king cricket ignited fear and loathing in Joburg, and developed an urban legend of being virtually indestructible. Buckland was, and still is, brilliant in this tour de force of storytelling – an exhilarating blend of intense physical theatre and dialogue/spoken word/script. He is performing his play in a season at the Baxter theatre in in celebration of his 70th birthday. In the programme, it is noted that this production came about from his time creating “an annotated text of the work as part of a book and website, to bring the text to a new generation of players and teachers”. He adds: “It struck me that it is still quite funny and with the rampant unapologetic surge of fascism in the world today, it becomes even more relevant than it seemed to be in 1988 when it was first presented, specifically to South Africa”.
The Parktown Prawn (Libanasidus vittatus) can grow quite large (up to about 7 cm), and can jump hectic distances. It defecates very unpleasantly when threatened. Their interaction with humans is still somewhat adversarial, even though they are harmless. It freaked people out by its ugliness and its ‘otherness’ and its ability to lurk in dark places, hiding for example in peoples’ shoes. No matter how much insect repellent was used and how many of its body parts were dismembered, these creatures just kept going. And if you couldn’t kill what you feared, what would happen? Maybe you would be vanquished by these creatures.
The Parktown Prawn was a triggering creature – physically and emotionally – the irrational fear it induced – of terror and terrorists. The Ugly Noo Noo – as a play – a piece of art – was subversive – in its dramatic impact in viscerally evoking the perception that that these creatures could somehow undermine and destabilize South Africa.
The power of the creature to trigger fear and paranoia was transmogrified in The Ugly Noo. A man uncovers the flap skin of his lawn and goes tumbling down an Alice in Wonderland Prawn hutch into a glass bottle where he encounters others who have been captured by the Noo Noo. Recounting the timeline that led up to and projects ahead of this event is both funny and dark. There is a chicken, a dog and other quirky characters. Some of the text is rooted in the late 80s and might be lost on a younger audience, but these are minor points. Buckland as master of physical comedy (clowning, mime) is extraordinary as he embodies the physical and emotional of being Noo Nooed and being a Noo Noo.
Buckland has updated the text. For instance the Noo Noo muses that he doesn’t want to be a human, he just wants to identify as one. I love the fact that Buckland has retained period elements so that it is a period piece of when many white South African in the late 1980s were clinging on in desperation to their white lives of dominance, wanting to stomp out insurgents as they perceived, without considering that all creatures deserve to live and be respected. The Ugly Noo Noo in 2024 heightens the need for all of us to share and respect each other, communicate and live together to avoid a dystopia of being imprisoned in glass bottles under the lawn.
The 2024 Ugly Noo Noo is a magical play – still retaining its subversive thrust of the 80s but speaking to us now in this fractured world. Bravo to Andrew Buckland and to his wife, Janet Buckland in the director’s seat.
✳ Andrew Buckland in The Ugly Noo Noo, July 23 to August 10 2024, Baxter Flipside, Cape Town. Direction by Janet Buckland. Pics by Bevan Davis
