J o e   B l o g

Author: Moira de Swardt, 9 October 2006

Student theatre is not simply "student theatre". There are varieties of it. At Wits most of the student theatre is performed under the auspices of the Performing Arts faculties and these are students who mostly hope to go on to earn their living in the theatre world in some form or other. They are, essentially, in the early stages of a professional career. This is not the case at the University of Johannesburg, where the pool of students who comprise the UJ Song & Dance Company are drawn from any and every faculty, and work under the auspices of the UJ Arts Academy for the duration of the production. These are not students who plan to make a career of drama. They are amateur thespians, operating in the community simply for the love of it. It is this enthusiasm and love of what they do which makes this production of "Westside Story" at the University of Johannesburg theatre such fun. .

The music is by Leonard Bernstein and the lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It has some famous numbers, probably the most famous of which is "I feel pretty", but "America", "Maria" and "One Hand, One Heart" get a fair amount of play time as well. The most delightful number of them all is "Gee, Officer Krupke!" which is a hilarious take on modern society's attitudes to young people and crime. A 19 piece orchestra under Marga Sander's baton brings Leonard Bernstein's immortal score to life. The young man who played Tony,Matt Counihan, has a particularly rich, true and beautiful singing voice, but there were also a few others who did exceptionally well. Of the main characters, Maria (Christel Mutombo), Anita (Motlatji Ditodi), Riff (Riccardo Pizzi) and Bernardo (Quintin van Biljon), the only one who seemed strained was Maria. I wondered if she were singing out of her natural vocal range.

It was quite a shock to me to discover from the programme that the musical was written 49 years ago now. I first saw it in the very early seventies. Set in "contemporary" New York it is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it was written. This modern-day Romeo and Juliet tale is a story of racial hatred, bigotry, violence and intolerance and I was thrilled that the director, Dennis Hutchinson, resisted any temptation to reset this work into modern South Africa.

The American accents with which the musical started out were well done, but not consistent. I have never found the lack of accents to be a problem and I would rather have our natural South African accents than badly done imitations of foreign places.

The choreographer, Elton Fortune, must have had a mammoth task to get the students to perform their song and dance routines as the cast were generally not good dancers. They did better in the actual fight scenes than the dance scenes.

The set was a magnificent screened scaffolding that gave the impression of solid rock until the lighting came on from behind it. Designed by Bradley Goss and built by Citrus Lounge it was very nice indeed. Costumes were by Ann Bailes and Kirsten Bailes. The only thing I found problematic with the costumes is that the Jets and the Sharks are usually dressed in two different colours to make distinguishing them easy, and also because the street gangs of New York traditionally have their distinct look. In this production they all simply wore contemporary student style street clothes so it was difficult to always tell who was who, especially from the back and high up on the balcony.

"Westside Story", like "Romeo and Juliet", ends with a death scene. It is, after all, a tragedy. This one irritated me. Tony gets shot. Maria gets the gun from the killer. She waves it around for a while, pointing it at half the cast. The police and other adults enter the scene. Maria then sits down next to the body, puts the gun down next to her and leans forward to cradle the body of her dead lover. The entire cast stand frozen, not one of them moving towards the gun to get it, not one leaving the scene while the going is good. Yeah! Right! To be plausible Maria should have either continued to hold the gun or put it in her lap.

This production will be of particular interest to students studying Romeo and Juliet, and to adults who fancy a trip down memory lane.

A community theatre production which has lots of energy and leaves one singing "I feel pretty!"