"The Mysteries", West End, Spring 2002 Press Cuttings

Adam Spiegel
presents
The Wilton's Music Hall production of
Yiimimangaliso
"The Mysteries"

PRESS CUTTINGS
(most recent at the top of this page)

A Racial Event That Became a Hit
New York Times Online - May 12, 2002 New York Times
By ALAN RIDING

LONDON -- VUMILE NOMANYAMA was understandably alarmed that his first-ever appearance onstage should be in the role of God. He was told to practice by standing in front of a mirror and repeating "I am God" until it became second nature. And by opening night, he felt ready. He moved to the front of the stage, his muscular chest bare, an African cloth wrapped around his waist, and introduced himself in a confident and clear voice: "I am God."

Several members of the audience immediately rose from their seats and walked out of the theater. Six years after the end of apartheid, the idea of a black God still upset some white South Africans. Yet others saw cause for celebration in the multiracial production of "Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries," a song-and-dance adaptation of the biblical stories as told in medieval England by the Chester Mystery Plays. The production, presented at the Spier Summer Festival in Stellenbosch near Cape Town in late 2000, showed that onstage - if not yet throughout society - black, white and "colored," or mixed-race, South Africans could work together on an equal footing.

It was also evidence of the wealth of artistic talent that had long been suppressed by apartheid.

Still, if in South Africa the show was initially viewed as a sociopolitical phenomenon, in London it became an artistic happening. Last summer, when the London-based Broomhill Opera company brought "The Mysteries" as well as its version of Bizet's "Carmen" for a one-month run at Wilton's Music Hall in the East End, both the public and the critics here responded enthusiastically.

Writing in The Guardian after seeing "The Mysteries", Michael Billington noted: "Played in rep with the same company's `Carmen,' this is an event that makes London theater an infinitely brighter, better place and quite simply raises the spirits."

In The Independent, Mark Pappenheim praised the company's lively "Carmen", but added: " `The Mysteries' is, if anything, even better."

Now, after adding a radical adaptation of "The Beggar's Opera" by John Gay to its repertory, the company is again on the road. Since February, it has performed "The Mysteries" to full houses in London's West End. This month, it takes "The Mysteries" and "Carmen" to the United States for the first time, presenting each show four times at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C., between May 24 and June 2; at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, "Carmen" will be performed twice and "The Mysteries" three times between June 13 and 16. "The Beggar's Opera" will be presented at Wilton's Music Hall in London in September, before it and "The Mysteries" alternate at the Old Vic through Christmas. A limited run on Broadway next season looks likely.

So how explain the remarkable success of what, after all, was conceived as an experiment in crossing the racial barriers still dividing South African culture? One factor is certainly the sheer exuberance of rookie performers. Another is the humor, comprehensible without supertitles, even when actors switch between English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa. Then there is inventiveness (a bale of hay for Jesus's manger) and a touch of politics (a white Cain kills a black Abel). But none of this would matter if the singing voices - both individually and in a cappella choruses - were not good. And it is here that the company can rightly claim to have discovered talent.

"I think I have a gift that I never realized that I had," said Mr. Nomanyama, the tenor who plays - and sings - the roles of Jesus as well as God in "The Mysteries." "I want to become an opera singer. I want to go fully into opera. It was always my dream. Now I have the opportunity."

The story behind "The Mysteries," though, is at the very least unlikely. Dick Enthoven, an expatriate businessman who returned to South Africa in the mid-1990's, bought the Spier Wine Estate outside of Stellenbosch, where he built an open-air theater and organized an annual summer season of shows, concerts and opera. His audience was mainly white.

Meanwhile, in England, Mark Dornford-May and Charles Hazlewood founded Broomhill Opera in a stately home in Kent, where they assumed the titles, respectively, of artistic director and music director. Their audience was middle class. But after three seasons, they moved to the working-class London district of Tower Hamlets near the Tower of London and set about restoring the dilapidated mid-19th-century Wilton's Music Hall.

"One day, a couple of years ago, Dick Enthoven called me up and invited me to become director of the Spier Festival," recalled Mr. Dornford-May, whose experience of South Africa was limited to running a weeklong theater workshop with Mr. Hazlewood in a township near Durban in 1997. "I said, `It's not my bag.' He asked me what I'd like to do. I said, `An ensemble company, workshops, something genuinely South African.' Dick said fine, and that was it."

The two Englishmen set off for South Africa in search of talent. They first organized auditions in traditional theaters and cultural centers in major cities, but soon realized that they were on the wrong track.

"These were white fortresses of European culture in the middle of black Africa," Mr. Dornford-May said. "We decided to contact choirs in townships and hold auditions right there in the townships. We made it clear that there were no entry qualifications. Everyone would be heard. I felt that anyone who walked in by themselves to sing to a couple of white guys had the confidence to perform onstage. Over three weeks, we heard 2,000 people."

Mr. Hazlewood added: "We had auditions in tiny halls, classrooms, wherever we could find. They would perform everything from Zulu war songs and Christian hymns to Frank Sinatra and Italian opera."

After 50 singers were selected, the decision to do "The Mysteries" (or "Yiimimangaliso," in Zulu) was easier: since most South Africans are Christians, they already knew the stories of the Bible. But there were other reasons. As a child, Mr. Dornford-May had appeared as an angel in the Mystery Plays in Chester, one of five English cities that have revived a medieval tradition smothered by the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century. There were also interesting parallels. As in South Africa, the actors in the original mystery plays were amateurs. Further, the Mystery Plays were performed at the time in English for people who could not understand the Latin mass. In South Africa, they could also be performed in the languages of the people.

The 25 scriptural plays, performed in medieval Chester over three days, have been reduced here to a two-hour show that begins at the Creation and ends at the Ascension. It also retains the humor of the Chester plays, notably the reluctance of "Mrs. Noah" to enter the Ark and the devilish antics of Lucifer. But the humor is African, which comes easily because, of the 40 actors onstage, there are 33 black performers, six white and one of mixed race. The music, arranged by Mr. Hazlewood, is based on traditional African folk songs and lullabies, and is played on percussion "noninstruments," like oil drums, bottles, wood boxes and even a bouncing rubber tire.

In the tradition of what is known as "rough theater," there is no scenery and only minimal props are used. Instead, the story is told entirely by the actors, whether in funny moments, like Lucifer imitating a cock crowing thrice, or in poignant moments, like Jesus's betrayal by Judas. The show ends with a dance celebrating Jesus's Ascension that seems to inspire audiences.

"In New York, standing ovations have become as ordinary as hot dogs, but in the rigorous English capital, you seldom see an entire audience leap to its feet in an unabashed display of collective joy," Benedict Nightingale wrote in The Times of London after "The Mysteries" returned here this winter. "Last night it happened."

After "The Mysteries," Mr. Dornford-May and Mr. Hazlewood decided the company was ready for more traditional opera. For their Carmen, they found the right mezzo voice and strong personality in Pauline Malefane, the Virgin Mary of "The Mysteries." Sandile Kamle, the Herod and Peter of "The Mysteries," became Don Jos, while Andre Strijdom, Joseph and Thomas in the first show, reappeared as the toreador Escamillo. The dialogue is again in South Africa's various languages, laced with a good deal of local humor, but the score is sung in English, accompanied by a 45-piece orchestra conducted by Mr. Hazlewood.

By now, of course, the performers can hardly be described as amateurs. Not only have they developed stagecraft, but they are also paid, with everyone receiving the same salary: $145 per week when they are in South Africa, and the union rate of $470 per week in London (no small sum for, say, Andries Mbali, Lucifer in "The Mysteries," who used to earn his living by washing cars). South Africans are also acquiring new skills in stage management, costume design and lighting.

Mr. Dornford-May, for one, seems confident in his team. For his next production he is hesitating between Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" and "Il Trittico," the title given by Puccini to three one-act operas. "Or," he added, "perhaps `Oedipus' done in the style of `The Mysteries.' "

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the company has switched its base from the Spier Wine Estate to the Joseph Stone Theater at Athlone near Cape Town. The reason was simple. Mr. Enthoven understood that the Spier audience was largely white because the festival was inaccessible to anyone without a car. He and Mr. Dornford-May therefore sought a more practical alternative.

"The new theater is on the main taxi route from the major townships," Mr. Dornford-May said, "and that makes all the difference."

"Guardian" Saturday 4th May 2002

The Independent - Review - Friday 12 April 2002

FOCUS Sunday Times March 3, 2002
It features 40 amateur actors, four different languages and rubbish bins for instruments, so why has The Mysteries taken the West End by storm?
Jane Mulkerrins

Bongani Bubu takes a final bow and exits stage right, leaving the captivated audience still cheering on its feet. Another night, another standing ovation. In his dressing room, in the heart of West End theatreland, he pulls on his trainers and sweat-shirt before heading out into the chill winter night, past the theatre-goers who are spilling out onto Shaftesbury Avenue, flushed and excited by the overwhelming performance they have just witnessed.

They are not alone. The Mysteries, which opened just over a week ago, has won unprecedented critical acclaim. "Make no mistake. This is one of the most moving, beautiful, humane and courageous shows you will ever see in the West End," lauded one critic. "This show will fill a hole in your soul," said another, while John Peter, theatre critic for The Sunday Times, writes in this week's Culture: "Nothing quite prepared me for the sheer, generous, magnificent exuberance of this show." Such plaudits are rare for our most celebrated actors but all the more so for a cast - all 40 of them - who are virtual amateurs, drawn from some of the most deprived South African townships.

Bubu himself grew up in a one-room house in a township on the Eastern Cape. "We had to eat there, sleep there, wash there, do everything in the one room. I even lived in a shack for about two years," said the 23-year-old, who until 18 months ago was midway through an uninspiring course at a local technical college. Now he, like the rest of the cast, is a West End star.

Their show, currently running at the Queen's Theatre, is an unorthodox production of the Chester medieval mystery plays - a series of Bible stories now packed full of humour and pathos and alternately sung and spoken in a mixture of Zulu, Afrikaans and Xhosa, as well as English. Musical accompaniment is created from oil drums, dustbins, sticks and bottles, while God comes complete with a shaven head, a six-pack stomach and a multicoloured sarong.

For 2½ hours the stage plays host to God, Jesus, and the devil; birth, death and resurrection; fire and floods. This is not a play about words - only one of the cast speaks English as a first language. The comedian Rory Bremner, a keen supporter of the group since he translated a version of the opera Carmen for it, believes the show connects the audience to their raw emotions.

"It really earths you, and connects you to the very essence of your humanity," he said. "It is the perfect antidote to the cynicism of modem British life." It is also symbolic of a trend in the West End that has seen many smaller, off-beat shows attract packed houses at a time when the traditional landmarks of theatreland, such as Cats and Starlight Express have closed down as audiences dwindled.

Such "sleeper" hits are almost impossible to predict. In the case of The Mysteries, it all started accidentally when Mark Dornford-May, the director of a small English opera company, visited South Africa in 1997 with the simple intention of holding theatre workshops. Nothing had prepared him for the experience he would find in Umlazi, a small township outside Durban. It was there that he heard a choir of jaw-dropping beauty and realised that here was untapped talent the whole world should hear. "I was absolutely bowled over," said Dornford-May. "In terms of singing ability, South Africa is probably the greatest country in the world." Along with his partner in Broomhill Opera, Charles Hazlewood, Dornford-May returned to South Africa to recruit some of the singers he had seen, holding open auditions that attracted more than 2,000 hopefuls from the most, deprived of townships across the country. Most of the applicants could not read music, nor had they stepped inside a theatre in their lives. Few were attracted by the prospect of stardom - they were there because they needed a job. "I don't think they would have cared if we had been offering work as chartered surveyors," said Hazlewood. Even those who were selected had little idea of what they had let themselves in for. "We had seen opera singers on TV, wearing dinner suits, and we went to the auditions convinced that we would end up on stage, wearing one too. We are still waiting," laughed Bubu.

Success in London has meant that the cast are now able to support their families back home in a way they had never dared hope. All but one of the female members of the London company are mothers, who have left their children behind to provide for their future. Nandie Mahlangu, 27, has bought her mother a car; others have bought fridges and ovens or are saving to buy houses for their families.

"It is good to be able to pay for an extension to the house, and my little brother to be able to go to a good school," said Andile Kosi, who had irregular casual work as a clerical assistant before joining the company. As a result of their achievements, the cast have also become an important symbol for the emerging new South Africa. At a homecoming celebration in Johannesburg last year, President Thabo Mbeki climbed up on stage to join them in a song and dance act. Shortly afterwards, the government's International Marketing Council granted the company 15m rand - about £1m - to continue its endeavours.

Dick Enthoven, the South African tycoon and arts patron who funded the initial nation-wide auditions, hopes the staggering success of the group will have an enduring impact. "They are fast becoming the new role models, the first heroes for black South Africans," he said. In a country so distorted by apartheid, they have the whole of South Africa behind them; all ages, colours and income levels."

The cast themselves are also becoming aware that with a West End success, and impending trips to festivals in America, they have become cultural ambassadors as much at home as abroad. "Nobody at home ever paid much attention if you said you wanted to be a singer," said Bubu. "Now that we are travelling the world, perhaps they will see that maybe there is something in this music thing."

Approval for the project is not unreserved - in a country starved of arts funding there have been mutterings of ill will towards the group's success and accusations of cultural imperialism. It is criticism the company and its fans reject. "It often takes someone coming from outside to start things going and shake things up," said Bremner. "People have never aspired to this before, because it wasn't possible to aspire to it," added Dornford-May. "There were no examples."

No examples also meant the cast had no expectations, and the competitive world of London theatre has singularly failed to unnerve them. "Because they are doing so well, and have played to standing ovations every night, I'm not sure they understand the magnitude of their success," said Hazlewood. I think, in their heart of hearts, they think London theatre is a pushover."

Financial Times - 22nd February 2002
From the townships to the West End
A bold South African opera project has crossed the still-existing racial divide, says Julia Llewelyn Smith

At the Spier wine estate under the purple shadows of the Stellenbosch mountains near Cape Town, the car park was full of Mercedes and Land Rovers with the latest security systems. The bar was packed with white South Africans in evening dress sipping chardonnay and studying the programme for that night's opera, part of the estate's annual festival.

Suddenly from outside there was a raucous cheer. In the car park, a coach was drawing up: full of black faces from the townships come to see the opera. In South Africa - where opera's image is even more elite than in Britain - it was an unprecedented sight.

More surprises were to come, when the audience entered the auditorium - and realised that virtually all the singers on stage were black as well. Most South African opera companies feature only a few blacks, in minor roles.

Most in the audience were delighted at this vision of a new South Africa. Not all. The opera was The Mysteries, based on the Chester mystery plays. When Vumile Nomanyama from Umtata in the Eastern Cape walked on stage and sang "I am God", several white members of the audience got up and left.

"They simply couldn't handle the idea of a black man being God, says Mark Dornford-May, artistic director of the Broomhill Opera, an English company. Two years ago he was approached by Dick Enthoven, Spier's owner and close friend of Nelson Mandela, to set up South Africa's first multi-ethnic opera company to perform at the festival.

"The festival was hugely successful but it featured only imported companies - nothing to help South Africa," says Dornford-May. "Enthoven's dream was to show there was more to this country than Aids, rape and murder, that it could achieve high art." In a search for new talent, Dornford-May and conductor Charles Hazlewood toured South Africa's townships. "I made it clear I wasn't going to run a politically correct company, I simply wanted people who could sing, black or white," he says. "At the same time, we decided not to look at CVs, because until recently most black people had had no chance to sing professionally."

Auditions were held in community halls, schools and churches. Hazlewood and Dornford-May heard more than 1,000 people, performing everything from Zulu folk songs and Barry White to opera they had learned from the radio. The men were astonished by the high level of talent on display, much nurtured in the popular township choirs, which offer temporary escape from an otherwise bleak existence. "Some countries are good at football, South Africa is good at singing, Afrikaaners as well as Zulu and Xhosa" says Dornford-May. "People sing all the time, so there is a huge base to the pyramid."

Today, the company consists of 40 singers - 33 black, one mixed-race, and the rest white, with five different mother tongues. One is a former ANC activist, another a 'very conservative" Afrikaaner, whose National Service was spent patrolling the townships where most of his new musical colleagues live.

Another original member of the cast, Wandile Madlakame, who played the Angel Gabriel, died of Aids after just a few performances: it is estimated that one in five South Africans is infected with HIV.

As well as such cultural differences to contend with, most of the company had no stage experience. "We set ourselves a pretty horrific target," says Hazlewood. "Most couldn't read music. Everything had to be taught aurally. All along what gave us security was, ultimately, we knew the talent's here."

Without transport links, it had previously been physically impossible for most blacks to attend opera. At Spier the company laid on buses from the townships, and organised a pay-what-you-can scheme for opera tickets. "A black audience gave Spier a very different feel. It was like being in a lively Baptist church. People were standing up and shouting 'Hallelujah!'" recalls Dornford-May. For performances at the Joseph Stone auditorium in Athlone, a mixed-race area on the edge of the town-ships, the opposite problem applies. "We have to make it very clear parking is secure or no whites would come."

In South Africa, press reaction was critical. Dornford-May says: "Opera here is very Eurocentric, so when we did Carmen set in a township, they were saying things like 'Why are there no Spanish dresses?' and 'There are no bull-fights in a township.' " British critics, however, saw things differently. When the company performed last year at Wilton's Music Hall, Broomhill's base in London's East End, it received rapturous reviews.

On their return to South Africa, the cast received the ultimate official accolade when Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's president, and his wife danced with them on stage at a gala performance in Johannesburg. It was a unique gesture from a leader who normally shuns showbiz. Later he chose a picture of the moment to illustrate his annual address to the nation.

Now the company is returning to London, this time to the West End, where The Mysteries opens tonight for 12 weeks at the Queen's Theatre before moving to the Spoleto festival and New Haven, Connecticut. "There's no way this show is just another attempt at affirmative action," says Adam Spiegel, the producer of the London run. "If it wasn't commercially viable I wouldn't be bringing it here. It's so uplifting and exhilarating I'm convinced it can fill a 1,000-seat theatre every night for weeks." With dialogue in a mixture of English, Xhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans, The Mysteries was chosen because its Bible stories were familiar to everyone. Its two leads were, until recently, unknowns. Vumile Nomanyama, 29, the God who so disturbed his white audience, was previously a primary-school teacher. Pauline Malefane, 26, who plays the Virgin Mary, was a student at the University of Cape Town and brought up in the township of Khayelitsha.

In a rags-to-riches story, Malefane was plucked from the chorus to play Carmen two weeks before opening night, after it became clear that the Swedish singer imported for the role had a voice that did not fit in with the rest of the cast. "I feel like I'm living a dream," she says. "I always wanted to sing opera but it was never seen as something for black people. Now we are performing it for our own people in our own languages it no longer seems foreign."

Some white members of the cast admit to being amazed, if delighted, by the casting. "At the beginning I fully expected the major roles to go to the whites," says Herman Hardick, an Afrikaaner from Cape Town. "That's what other opera companies would have done. In South Africa, it's a huge deal. We are definitely setting a standard in what can be achieved if you give people a chance."

He continues: "I was brought up to be afraid of blacks. To be honest, my first day here I looked at some people and thought 'I don't know if anything good can come from you.' Now my prejudices have been demolished."

Isabel Martens, 22, from the North West Province, the heartland of white supremacism, says: "Before this, the idea of a white person even driving into Athlone was a revolutionary idea. When I arrived for the audition I was convinced I would be murdered. I knew nothing about how black people lived or their culture." Yet relations between all ethnic groups are still imperfect. "We mix, but we then often find we have to get back to our own groupings just to find common ground," says Hardick. "It's not an easy transition. If even we find it difficult, you realise how far the country has to go."

The Daily Telegraph - 18th February 2002
The cast of a remarkable new version of the Mysteries was recruited from South African townships. Now, thanks to their astonishing talent, they are about to be West End Stars.
Veronica Lee.

A line of would-be actors and singers winds around the block while in a small, hot room, three men audition some of the 1,500 hopefuls they will whittle down to the 40 places available. The new series of Pop Idol? No, the casting process for Broomhill Opera's black South African version of The Mysteries - one of the most remarkable theatrical events of last year, which is now about to open in the West End. Yiimimangaliso is a multi-lingual musical version of the Chester Mysteries, performed in English, Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans. When it was performed for a few weeks last summer at Broomhill Opera's East London home, Wilton's Music Hall, The Mysteries could have sold out many times over, such was the clamour for tickets after rapturous reviews. Charles Spencer, writing in these pages, said it was "as funny, as moving, as inventive and as beautiful as anything I have seen on stage this year".

The company's route to the West End is a remarkable journey that began a few years ago at a winery near Cape Town. Dick Enthoven, winemaker, benefactor, founder and organiser of the Spier Arts Festival that he holds each year at his vineyard in Stellenbosch, invited Broomhill Opera to form an association with the festival and in summer 2000 Broomhill's musical director Charles Hazlewood and a few colleagues went to South Africa to start the auditioning process, which lasted a month.

Broomhill went to several remote townships, where radio announcements and word of mouth brought people along in droves. "None of them came along expecting or even hoping to be stars," says Hazlewood. "If we had been offering jobs at McDonald's many would have attended In fact two people turned up just wanting a job, any job, making the tea or ironing the costumes. They are now in the chorus.

While a handful of company members have sung professionally or semi-professionally, the majority are men an women who once sang purely for pleasure. Most were unemployed. One, bass Andries Mbali, used to earn his living washing cars, armed with just a bucket and sponge, Now he sings Lucifer.

"We had auditions in tiny halls, classrooms, wherever we could find," says Hazlewood. "They would perform everything from Zulu war songs and Christian hymns to Frank Sinatra and Italian opera. I particularly remember one township we visited: I looked up and saw a monkey sitting at the open window, listening intently to one guy singing Nessun Dorma."

Hazlewood and co were not expecting any cast members to be singing operatic arias (there is no permanent South African opera company and opera was never aimed at the black population), but many of the people auditioning not only sang it but were word-perfect in Italian or French. People such as Andile Tshoni, who, like many of his soon-to-be colleagues, first heard opera on the radio. "The director of my choir also showed us some opera videos, which we learnt without understanding what the words meant. A friend bought me a book of scores and later I got translations." Tshoni, a tenor, sang two Verdi arias at his auditions, but since joining the company has broadened his tastes and his favourite composer is now Mozart - "Cosi fan tutte, for the quality of the choruses". Aged 32, he says he was unhappy in his previous job - government clerical worker - and is deeply grateful for his new life. "I cried when they told me they wanted to employ me."

Tshoni had to turn down a place at music college in Durban when he was younger because he could not afford the fees. But Lungelwa Blou, a soprano who sings Japhet's wife, had the opposite problem. Now 23, and a Cape Town University music student, she first heard opera when her friends there introduced her to it; she was captivated. and applied to join them. Having completed two terms, she left to join the company when it went to London last year. "They are training my voice as well as I could have been taught at university," she says. "I am learning so much by being in this company. This is my dream."

Many of the 40-strong company had belonged to choirs, but in any case singing is ingrained in black South African culture. The tradition of choir singing is hugely popular, particularly in the townships. "For the older generation, during apartheid and the darkness of that regime, nothing was sacred and everything could be taken from you - your home, your job, your family," Hazlewood says, "but the one thing that could not be taken was your singing, your inner spirit."

Church and school are where most of The Mysteries cast first sang. Vumile Nomanyama, who plays God and Jesus, taught English by day and sang in choirs by night. To guffaws from other cast members, he says that he is "a lazy tenor".

"I have noticed a great change since I joined the company. I never knew that my voice had any quality, but they have done a great job in bringing out that potential in me, and every member of the cast. There is so much talent that needed to be exposed." The benefits are mutual, says Hazlewood, despite the fact that only a handful of the company can read music. "They learn everything by ear so we can teach them a tune in five minutes flat and then they do their own 40-part harmonies that take your breath away." Hazlewood, who has worked with some of the leading British orchestras, jokingly compares their approach: "I've asked them to improvise and they come out in a cold sweat."

He believes that some cast members will soon be performing in the world's most famous theatres - The National Theatre, Covent Garden, La Scala - you name it, they are capable of it. This company is like a goldmine." What about doing the next Pop Idol in South Africa? "Oh yes," he enthuses. "As long as I'm on 10 per cent, of course."

'The Mysteries' opens on Thursday at Queens Theatre (0870 890 1110)

The Times - 8th February 2002
Crosstown traffic
Cultural barriers are being broken down in film and theatre, finds Daniel Rosenthal

Last May, at Wilton's Music Hall in East London, The Mysteries became one of the arts sensations of 2001. Using songs, dance and a translation blending Xhosa, Afrikaans, Zulu and English, 40 young South Africans hurled themselves into the Chester Mystery Plays with a joyous energy that astonished critics and audiences.

The Mysteries comes to the West End later this month, and, like international takes on Shakespeare, Brecht, Chekhov and other theatrical giants, it demonstrates that most positive of artistic phenomenon: one country's performers illuminating another nation's classics.

The Mysteries' English musical director, Charles Hazlewood, believes that by telling the Bible stories, from Eden to Gethsemane, in such exuberant, eclectic fashion, the production may bring us closer to the style and spirit of the productions funded and organised by Chester's craft guilds from the 14th to 16th centuries. Just as Hazlewood and Mysteries director Mark Dornford-May have created a hybrid, featuring African a cappella choruses, an English Renaissance carol and "rough theatre" devices (crates and fencing put to inventive use), so the original cycle combined liturgical and minstrel music, and stage effects borrowed from the town's carnival-like Midsummer show.

There is also common ground in the casting. Of the 40 Mysteries players, first assembled 18 months ago at the Spier Festival in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, more than 30 had never previously been in a theatre, let alone acted for a paying audience. The same was true of Chester residents in the Mystery casts. 'Those productions did not use professional actors, although community actors were paid to perform," says Professor David Mills, head of English Language and Literature at the University of Liverpool. "Indeed, with some of the later Chester cycles, after 1550, the banns announcing the performances said, in effect: 'Don't judge us by professional standards. Ours are common or country players.'"

The Mysteries company, says Hazlewood, don't behave like modern-day actors, who can switch off after a performance. "Our actors are deeply affected by what they do. Vumile Nomanyama, who plays God and Christ, takes hours each night to get over the vilification and torture. For black South Africans, performance is an essential part of their very selves, because in the dark days of apartheid their voices and music were the only things that couldn't be taken away from them. That's much closer, I think, to how the Cycle was originally performed. There must have been a lot less artifice and technique from actors back then, with no devices up their sleeves from formal training.

It was the same with the black audiences for The Mysteries at Spier. Most had never been to the theatre, and their response was much more demonstrative than white people are in South Africa or England. They heckled, shouted, screamed, laughed, cried. Again, that's much more how one imagines the original staging - an absolute free-for-all, more like bear-fighting than a theatre performance today."

The dearth of documentary evidence makes such comparisons largely speculative. Hazlewood is on surer ground when he addresses The Mysteries impact on attitudes towards South African culture in Britain, Australia and North America, the three destinations on the show's world tour. "We have a majority black cast, with some coloured and white members, and the way they work together proves to the world that the vision of South Africa as the rainbow nation is genuine," he says. "People can get stuck in together, with no barriers."

A desire to change the way others see your country also underlies the film Te Tangata Whai Rawa, otherwise known as The Maori Merchant of Venice. It receives its world premiere in Hamilton, New Zealand, next Friday. Like The Mysteries, Don Selwyn's feature uses a native cast and a faithful translation of an English source (Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jones's formal, poetic Maori version of Shakespeare), and embellishes the plot and characters with local traditions, art and music. For example, Portia (renamed Pohia) is still a Christian, but her cultural roots are emphatically Maori: the suitors are welcomed to her estate with a w'ero warrior challenge and Maori song.

Selwyn says that the film combines his passion for the Bard with an equally longstanding commitment to revitalising Maori language and culture, and bringing them to a global audience. His aims seem especially important when one considers that in the 1990s international cinemagoers derived their sole perspective on Maori life from Lee Tamahori's hit, Once Were Warriors (1994), with its shocking portrayal of present-day Maori families torn apart by domestic violence and juvenile crime.

Where the Maori Merchant and The Mysteries dress their sources in new robes, numerous writers and directors have recently taken a more radical approach to classic dramas. They have been hopping over historical and geographical borders to give characters new nationalities, and literally bring the playwright's themes closer to home.

Two years ago, Liz Lochhead rewrote Chekhov's Three Sisters, moving the story from pre-revolutionary Russia to rural Scotland, just after the Second World War, where the women longed for Oxford rather than Moscow. The shift made sense, Lochhead said at the time, because "sometimes the Russian setting can give plays a veneer of exoticism, which means the heart is never quite glimpsed through the veil of translation".

Audiences here and in Johannesburg saw Chekhov undergo similar treatment in Janet Suzman's The Free State (2000), which uprooted The Cherry Orchard from Russia to South Africa after the 1994 elections. It was a close cousin of Suzman's The Good Woman of Sharkville (1996), a township reworking of Brecht's China-set fable, The Good Woman of Setzuan.

"In South Africa," says Suzman, "the majority of the black audience and most of the whites view both those plays as hoary old things, and the only reason to do a classic is to refresh it. Any inherent messages are perfectly extractable if the plays are staged as written, but I thought they readily transferred to South Africa. In the Chekhov, the parallel of a freed serf buying the land-owning family's estate is obvious to South Africans. The Brecht asks 'Can you be poor and good?' That's an everyday problem for millions of people in Jo'burg."

Suzman and Lochhead's method is perhaps the richest form of adaptation. Like Jane Smiley's novel A Thousand Acres (King Lear transformed into a tyrannical lowa farmer), Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa's samurai film of Macbeth) or even Clueless (Jane Austen's Emma moved to a 1990s Beverly Hills high school), such works reaffirm one of the glories of the classics. "Through them," says Suzman, "you can rediscover the nature of another country."

The Mysteries is in preview from February 21 and opens on February 26 at the Queens Theatre, W1

latest revision in this section:-
Tuesday 14th May 2002

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