Staging mars Seane’s dominating presence

TIN BUCKET DRUM

Director: Jade Bowers

playwright: Neil Coppen

Performing Artist: Warona Seane

Music composed and performed by: Matthew MacFarlane

Age Restriction: PG (Not suitable for very young children)

Venue: UJ Con Cowan Theatre, Bunting Road Campus, Auckland Park

Until: Saturday

RATING: ***

Storytelling is the oldest form of theatre and when you have an actor like Seane embracing her audience, half the battle is won. Give her a script like the acclaimed Tin Bucket Drum and she will take flight, which she does here.

She has both the voice and the presence and uses all of it to tell this universal tale of those who have power and those who have nothing to lose but their dreams. Once those with a hunger that never ends start feasting on their people, it’s as if the lifeforce of those struggling is being sucked right out of the community as things keep deteriorating.

But try as you will, there is a continuous cycle, it seems, and goodness will prevail when someone stands up and fights back. They cannot help themselves and theirs is a belief in humankind that cannot be quelled or tempted.

Musician/composer MacFarlane adds texture to the mood of the tale with music and percussion as he introduces sounds not only for the life happening around him, but also for the emotional twists and turns the story takes. He is a playful addition which works as a landscape for Seane’s voice as she rides the hills and valleys with her transformational tale.

What was missing was more imaginative staging, something the story demands because you’re not just sitting around a fire and telling the story, you’re on a stage with lighting and everything else your head could conjure up with this imaginative narrative.

Take lighting, for example, it’s a powerful tool and there were hints of exploiting and adding to this tale. But that’s just it, it wasn’t enough. It should have been explosive in these circumstances where it should become a major player. It could have been used more innovatively, playing with exaggerated shadows which could create monsters to add to the drama of the tale.

It also felt as if a better choice could have been made when indicating the different characters. Because some of the changes follow swiftly on one another, changing hats becomes a tedious, even clumsy, exercise. Paying homage to the title, perhaps the characters could have been announced with tin cut-outs which could have added to the piece’s artistic construct.

With Seane in charge, the riches are ample, but it could have been so much more with the visual underpinning of the ripping emotional heft already in place.