The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureTheatre

African Gothic at Park Theatre

African Gothic at Park Theatre | Theatre review
7 January 2016
Stuart Boyland
Avatar
Stuart Boyland
7 January 2016

Though there’s a wintry chill in the air outside, Two Sheds Theatre have conjured a sweltering, volatile atmosphere within Park’s 90-seat auditorium for their restaging of South African Reza de Wet’s African Gothic.

Set in an isolated corner of rural South Africa, the play centres on orphaned siblings Sussie (Janna Fox) and Frikkie (Oliver Gomm), who are barely surviving through a severe drought by trading the vestiges of their departed Boer parents’ farmstead while hoping for the rains to return.

From the first glimpse into their dusty and dilapidated shack, it’s clear the adult pair’s development has been arrested by the tragedy of their sorrowful existence. After waking at sunset, they while away their time with childish and often disturbingly incestuous role-play based on memories from when they were a complete family, while being waited on by native housekeeper Alina (Lesley Ewen). Their uneasy equilibrium is threatened when city lawyer Grové (Adam Ewan) arrives seeking to execute a dead aunt’s will. The world they have created seems destined to be doomed by his judgement, until car trouble throws them a lifeline.

The leads do very well inhabiting de Wet’s script (originally written in Afrikaans) in all its frantically unhinged glory, forcing those watching to accept their twisted corruption of domesticity as fact. This departure is assisted by Nancy Surman’s set: full of tattered edges and asymmetric lines like a vision from a fevered dream. Ewan’s measured incredulity counters the madness well, but it is Ewen’s stoic and almost wordless Alina who steals the show, standing in quiet support of her young charges in spite of their obvious illness.

Though grim and uncomfortable viewing at times, African Gothic offers a most fulfilling theatrical performance by drawing its audience entirely into its world, and so too into the mouth of madness.

★★★★★

Stuart Boyland

African Gothic is on at Park Theatre from 23rd December 2015 until 23rd January 2016, for further information or to book visit here.

Watch a teaser trailer here:

Related Items@ParkTheatre (Theatre)@twoshedstheatre (Theatre Company)review

More in Theatre

The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre

★★★★★
Natallia Pearmain
Read More

Dirty Dancing the Movie in concert at Apollo Theatre

★★★★★
Jim Compton-Hall
Read More

My Fair Lady at the London Coliseum

★★★★★
Michael Higgs
Read More

“When you’re presented with different dilemmas in life, you respond accordingly”: Debbie Kurup on The Cher Show

Mae Trumata
Read More

2:22 A Ghost Story at Criterion Theatre

★★★★★
Michael Higgs
Read More

The House of Shades at Almeida Theatre

★★★★★
Csilla Tornallyay
Read More

Grease at Dominion Theatre

★★★★★
Cristiana Ferrauti
Read More

House of Ife at Bush Theatre

★★★★★
Selina Begum
Read More

Banter Jar at Lion & Unicorn Theatre: “An authentic and timely one-woman show”

★★★★★
Jessica Wall
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Theatre review

Stuart Boyland

African Gothic

★★★★★

Dates

23rd December 2015 - 23rd January 2016

Price

£16.50-£18

Links & directions

WebsiteMap

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Albert Adrià reopens Enigma on 7 June as a “fun-dining” restaurant and cocktail bar
    Food & Drinks
  • Paolo Nutini at the 100 Club
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Crimes of the Future: Three new clips from David Cronenberg’s dystopian body horror film
    Cannes
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Men
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Diary of a Fleeting Affair (Chronique d’une Liaison Passagère)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Don Juan
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Triangle of Sadness
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Return to Seoul
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Men
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Triangle of Sadness
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Aftersun
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Paris Memories (Revoir Paris)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • More than Ever (Plus que Jamais)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Paranoid Girls | Movie review
Creed | Movie review