A fresh twist to the revenge of a betrayed husband during the days of Apartheid

My focus on creativity in Africa and the positive reviews of the play The Suit based on the short story by South African writer, Can Themba, made me overcome my reluctance to see yet again a story about a wife’s adultery and a husband’s revenge. I was afraid it would all feel too familiar and since it was taking place in Africa where polygamy is accepted in many local tribal communities I could pretty much foresee that my blood would boil a bit at some point with the unfair gender standards. Was it going to have a different ending than any of the other precedent works of fiction on adultery such as Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina?  The wife dies and The Suit is no exception from that perspective.

However, I was in for a pleasant surprise.

The story of The Suit takes place in Sophiatown, a Johannesburg township, and centers on Philemon, who works for a middle class lawyer and his wife Matilda. He loves his wife and seems happy with his life until he finds out that she has been seeing another man. He surprises her with her lover who leaves in a rush leaving his suit behind.  Philemon then devises a rather unique form of punishment: the suit must be treated as an honored guest and the wife must take it wherever she goes as a reminder of her betrayal.  William Nadylam plays a husband in full control of the situation, only revealing true emotion at the end when he holds her dead in his arms.  Beautiful Nonhlanhla Kheswa’s Matilda, whose choices in life are so limited, comes alive when she can sing or love.

The play, a production by Peter Brook, Marie-Helene Estienne, and Franck Krawczyk felt fresh and original despite weaknesses in the weaving of the two parallel plots: the unraveling of the marriage and the dismantling of Sophiatown, a black urban cultural hub. The Apartheid Group Areas Act of the 1950’s assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections and as a result nonwhites were forcibly removed and moved to much smaller spaces. This is what happened to Sophiatown, a township of Johannesburg, which was the epicenter of politics, Jazz, and Blues during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Peter Brook’s minimalist but colorful production offered unexpected lightness and humor which combined with a diverse musical score, made the cruelty of both the husband’s revenge and Apartheid oddly bearable. A few brightly colored chairs and several clothes hanging racks were the only props and in a rather fluid and ever changing way became surrogates for beds, doorways, windows and local packed buses.  Most original was the idea of making the suit an instrument of Philemon’s punishment. Peter Brooks suggest that such an idea could only be born out of the violent injustices of Apartheid in South Africa where there was no escape. However, the suit is more than an instrument of torture, it becomes also a reminder of Matilda’s desire for her lover when she so sensuously and playfully pretends that the suit is inhabited by her lover who caresses her.

I loved that it was narrated as a story. It reminded me of how stories are passed down orally from one generation to another in black Africa. The narration also helped make the story of Philemon and Matilda feel like a myth and the spare setting with no specificity further contributed to that feeling. However, that same feeling was quickly dispelled when accounts of local happenings brought forth the harsh reality of the life of black South Africa. The narrator, Jared Mc Neill, describes the rejection South African blacks encounter when they wish to attend “white” churches, which was a phenomenon the author, Can Themba, had investigated during his years working for Drum magazine.

But the greatest pleasure I had was in listening to the songs and to the music. The three musicians playing respectively the guitar, piano and trumpet set the tone for each scene with a selection of musical scores including a Schubert’s lieder, the humming of the African American song about slavery Strange Fruit and African melodies. As a result, the play’s underlying themes of love, revenge and injustice, were no longer limited in time and space and became universal.

My favorite was the last deeply moving song, Maleika, a Tanzanian love song that Matilda (Kheswa) sings beautifully just before she comes to her sad end.

Maleika is sung here by Angelique Kidjo