Pieter-Dirk Uys insists, his tongue almost through his cheek, that his new satirical play is ”fictitious and any resemblance to political figures — is purely coincidental”.
No prizes for guessing the real identity of the main character in MacBeki, which opens this Friday at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, or of the character McZum. Only slightly less obvious are Lady M, Lord Ramabanquo and Maduba.
The play uses Shakespearean references, urban legends, rumour and poetic licence in a sweeping Machiavellian (”MacBekivellian” to Uys) narrative about the lust for power and the ruin it brings the protagonist.
In Uys’s version, MacBeki and Lady M are close friends, their relationship dates back to the hoary landscape of Leningrad and London where ”Johnny Walker in hand, we plotted and planned”.
In a speech echoing Hamlet MacBeki deliberates on whether to get Maduba out of the way. ”To be or not to be king, that is the question …” The indecision doesn’t last long: he soon decides ”the king must be removed”.
Unlike Macbeth, MacBeki decides against killing for the throne. ”I am very afraid of Ramabanquo. There is something noble about him that makes me feel lesser to him,” he muses. Ramabanquo is soon deployed to the corporate world after MacBeki tells three companies, Sosal, Angla and Giltfelds, that he wishes to ”see more of us represented at the helms of your businesses”.
MacBeki presides over a land in the grip of a pestilence. He needs advice from Lady M, still to unpack her ”medical books, diaries and my priceless recipes”, who points out that ”the contentious A leads to the destructive B, which then adds up to the deadly C. C stands for corpses which will become rich earth to give bloom to the new world. Our new world.”
MacZum signals his entry declaring: ”Bring me my machine gun.” Later he insists there ”was no forcible sexual assault — We had consensual relations.” Lady M’s health is faltering. ”It is my liver. I contracted an ailment while in the jungles during the struggle,” she says, prompting Ramabanquo’s acerbic riposte: ”Mixing Leningrad vodka, British gin — would send any liver into exile.”
The once clear-headed MacBeki starts seeing apparitions and hearing voices; he then loses his gift for highbrow oratory and his descent culminates in his overthrow in the Polokwane Forest.
MacBeki is by turns funny in its prodding at South Africa’s political scene (on SAA: ”Chicken, beef or dagga?”) and lazy in its shameless rifling of urban legends. Uys himself is an ever-present character, who lends a narcissistic feel to the narrative. But as the blurb says, it is ”a farce to be reckoned with”.