Breaking Plates

On the night Great Britain decided to choose a path no one had thought through to a logical conclusion; we went to the theatre on the Square … the square being Nelson Mandela square in Sandton City, the power quarter of Greater Jozi.
 
We went to the opening night of Renos Spanoudes’ play: ‘Breaking Plates’, a one person show: written and played by himself. It was deeply into a current genre representing that part of Jozi’s historical population, that is relatively evaporating: and operates in a world of those who are highly taxed but with limited political input; and is known conveniently as Retrospective.
 
And for Spanoudes? And the performance: a well worn cliché that never truly understands itself to be a cliché… A ‘Tour de Force’ with capitals.
 
For non germane reasons I have great difficulty with sitting anywhere for more than ten to fifteen minutes before the combination loss of mobility and sheer pain distract me from what I’m doing. Usually when we go to the movies or the theatre I choose the seat on the aisle on the right of the facility, so that I can stretch a leg or, if not available, the front row, which usually is: at the movie houses.
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On this occasion our tickets led us to a prime position in the middle of the back row. [It is a wonderfully Intimate theatre]from which i had an excellent view of the performance.
 
I would commend this information presented in the preceding two paragraphs as a testimaony to the power of Spanoude’s presentation: that it was so compelling that all conciousness of pain was absorbed by the text… That through humour and its pain made mine more bearable perhaps… I was only occasionally aware that the performance is a long single sitting… and that does not happen often.
 
In a series of five vignettes Spanoudes reprises several roles, one of which bore a haunting memory of a famous picture routinely used as a perception measuring tool, from the world of Psychiatry: a picture that from one angle or, point of view, is of a young woman: and from another, an aged crone. His performance here as the hauntingly aged crone was superb… bordering occasionally toward an edge of ruinous bathos and then drawing back delicately at the same instant… paced with aching anxiety: as he relates the woman’s empathically sad loss of purpose.
 
The irony he presents throughout in an un-missable [sic] performance, was crucifyingly apparent hours later, when we woke, on our side of the planet to the news regarding the now infamous BREXIT. We know now that the populace of that curious island called Geat Britain, from which I am spawned, had chose an act of seeming National Suicide: that has thrown the world into complete disarray.
 
They chose to step off a cliff during the darkest part of night, without any understanding of what lay ahead; whether some life-preserving trampoline affair… ish thingy would be waiting, at somewhere below ground level to catch them, bounce them into unprecedented prosperity: and keep them warm at night.
 
They, seemingly sleepwalked themselves to the voting booth/or not, in what was not a particularly tensely fought referendum, in which less than three quarters of the prospective voting populace actually troubled to go and vote … like many didn’t really care, either way… The union of which they had been a member for all of the country’s under 40s existence was so taken for granted that many never knew who they were, apparently, for there were reports on the Friday following the outcome, that “European Union” was the top trending item on Google that day… Talk about catching an ‘after action’ ‘wake up’….
 
And that form of news was what Renou Spanoudes set out to explore as, with a delicate series of brushstrokes he evaluates what is lost, about where we’ve been: when we can no longer go there… And hence dwell on, in Retrospection.
 
Bravo Renos.
 
P.S. he said it was on till July 9th so should you be in Sandton to inspect the late President’s monumental statue don’t miss ‘Breaking Plates’.