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SHOW: The Night Doctor
DIRECTOR: Liz Mills
CAST: Alex Halligey, Tinarie Van Wyk Loots, Adrienne Pearce, Adrian Galley and Thato Cele
VENUE: The Artscape Arena until October 30
REVIEW: Peter Tromp
Juliet Jenkin has a way with words. Like a blacksmith imposing his will on a piece of red hot metal, she can manipulate the English language as if it is her own private little toy box.
When her linguistic virtuosity pays off, the results can be spectacular. When she is not operating at optimum level, her postulations can come across as insular and very difficult to connect with.
Her latest play, ‘The Night Doctor,’ is the writers’ most complex yet, and it is clear that she worked from a template of not pandering to any preconceived notions people might have of her.
There are so many ideas jostling for your attention throughout that it is almost impossible to keep up with all of them.
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Unfortunately, for most of the play it feels as if Jenkin had difficulty keeping track of them herself and ‘The Night Doctor’ suffers from feeling unfocused and disjointed for much of its duration.
The good ideas and the bad impulses are woven together so tightly that it ultimately becomes an exhausting battle differentiating between the two and hanging on to the few best bits.
This coupled with some distinctly bad direction on the part of Liz Mills leads to ‘The Night Doctor’ buckling under its own weight.
This is sad since it is clear that Jenkin is communicating from a deeply interior space and is striving really hard to connect with her audience. But what is she really trying to say with the piece? The moment I became captivated, the haphazard direction intervened along with some pretty searching metaphors and existential musings and I was forced at arm’s length again.
The play takes place during a strange night at the Pietermaritzburg parental home of young doctor Catherine (Alex Halligey). She has just returned home and announces to her parents’ shock that she has quit her job.
Through the course of ‘The Night Doctor’ we come to understand the almost cosmic level of disenchantment and exhaustion her job of tending to the country’s less fortunate has exacted on her.
The moments of blink-and-you’ll-miss it tenderness, something that has always been Jenkin’s strength, constitute the play’s saving grace.
Few people play that better than Halligey, as she showcased so magnificently in ‘The Boy Who Fell From The Roof,’ and here she reminds one again of what a sensitive actress she is, even as she is portraying a pretty exasperating character.
We come to care for Catherine eventually, but it isn’t easy. The other characters in the play that orbit her are only there to mirror or illuminate Catherine’s psyche so we can understand her disillusionment better, which is nothing less than the disillusionment with a dysfunctional South Africa.
This constitutes another imbalance that exacts a knell-like toll eventually. We are over-indulged with Catherine and there is not enough definition in the other characters to balance the scales.
* Book at Computicket.
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Alex Halligey and Tinarie Van Wyk Loots in ‘Night Doctor’
