June 2010 Theatre Review by Lawrence Bommer
Itsoseng
The hangover that happens when the change you hope for doesn’t happen—that haunts this 70-minute solo show by South African actor Omphile Molusi, a rising star at the Royal Shakespeare Company (where “Itsoseng” won the Goldin Bursary Award). It’s a stunning tour de force that creates and destroys an entire world before our eyes. Molusi is young, intense and totally committed to his harrowing tale where what doesn’t happen matters hurts most. Toxic with disillusionment, this burning monologue focuses on the title South African township, formerly a part of the apartheid-generated homeland of Bophuthatswana (now the North West Province).
A corrupt Zulu protectorate of white misrule, Molusi’s military state was spectacularly mismanaged by Lucas Mangope, a master of fraud and nepotism. But his tyranny seemed doomed by the hope-charged change promised by Nelson Mandela and a triumphant A.N.C. Overthrowing Mangope seemed the logical prelude to democracy and, if in 1994 that involved burning down and looting the shopping center that generated most of the local jobs, well, the new regime would rebuild everything anyway. “Change is coming!” was the hopeful (and, to Americans, very familiar) mantra for the future.
But Molusi’s heartbreaking piece returns him to the gutted—and never rebuilt—shopping center to meet the shell-shocked survivors. In this “walking graveyard” he recalls the one great love of his short life, a woman he had hoped to rescue from this crime-ridden dead end dump. But for this prostitute who had had one too many illegal abortions the longed-for escape never happens.
Itsoseng means “Wake yourself up,” but the plight of the township has been as ruthlessly ignored as it was under Magope. Molusi gives voices to the alcoholics, the broken revolutionaries of 1994 (and the stirring war chants that fueled their rebellion) and, above all, to his own despair over the treacherous dreams that never took root. If some Americans feel a similar despair after so much rhetoric about change we can believe in and a new harvesting of hope, well, that would be entirely appropriate. I don’t think the World Cup will change anything either.
“Itsoseng” will continue at the upstairs theater at Chicago Shakespeare Theater through June 20, 2010. Performances are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets range from $28-$38 and are available at the box office, by phone at 312-595-5600 or online at www.chicagoshakes.com.
About Lawrence Bommer
A
native Chicagoan, Lawrence Bommer has been an active free-lance
writer and playwright since 1975. For twenty years he wrote a
weekly column, "Opening Nights" for the Friday section of
the Chicago Tribune, where he also regularly contributed theater
criticism and feature writing. His work has appeared in
Stagebill, the Pulitzer-Lerner newspapers and The Advocate.
Mr. Bommer was theater editor for the Windy City Times since its founding until 1999; from 1986 a theater critic for the Chicago Reader (where he has also written for the "Calendar" and "Our Town" sections); Chicago Free Press, where he was contributing editor until the paper’s demise in spring 2010; Chicago Footlights, where he has been a regular contributor; and Plays International, where he is the Chicago correspondent. He has also contributed to the Hollywood Reporter, PerformInk, Screen Magazine, CitySearch, the Chicago Illini, Inside Chicago, Illinois Entertainer, the International Theatre Festival of Chicago newsletter, Plays International, CitySearch, Playbill Online, TheatreMania, CurtainUp.com and Chicago Enterprise. Mr. Bommer is a three-time finalist for a Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in the "arts criticism" category. In 1991 he became a regular theater and, dance critic and arts writer for the Chicago Tribune. His commentary has also aired on LesBiGay Radio, WGN and on Milwaukee Public Radio.
As a playwright, Mr. Bommer's work has been produced in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Madison and, in Chicago, by the Organic Theater Company (Jonathan Wild [1979], Poe [1980]. Gulliver's Last Travels [1993] and by Lionheart Gay Theatre (Gunsel, The Tyrannicides, Killers and Comrades). Since 1976 Mr. Bommer has taught at the Francis W. Parker School and was a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1969 to 1975 (where he received his Master's degree in English), as well as a guest lecturer at the College of DuPage, Roosevelt University, DePaul University and the University of Chicago. Mr. Bommer is a member of the American Theater Critics Association and has been a member of the National Writers Union and the Dramatists Guild.