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THEATRE: The Promise, On Stage
On a small farm outside Pretoria, the Swart family – "a typical bunch of white South Africans" – tries to hold itself together through the violent lurches of recent history. They have promised to give a small piece of land with a tiny house on it to Salome, the Sotho woman who has worked for them her whole life. It is a worthless property, but they will not give it up.
Are they cursed or just unlucky? One by one, members of the family die while everything around them changes, and they try to stay the same. Only two siblings will eventually be left, facing each other over a great divide: Anton, the tormented older brother, and Amor, his strange younger sister.
Damon Galgut's novel, The Promise, received international recognition when it won the 2021 Booker Prize. The prize is conferred on the best English work of fiction published in the UK and Ireland. Only four other South Africans have received the prestigious accolade.
Audiences can now experience Galgut's work in the theatre, with a bold rendering helmed by Sylvaine Strike. It condenses Galgut's narrative to create a surreal and dream-like experience. One must adjust to the narrative style, but once you've settled in, it's like you've been hypnotised.
The Promise, On Stage overflows with dynamic performances from a cast that includes Rob van Vuuren, Kate Normington, Frank Opperman, Chuma Sopotela, Cintaine Schutte, Jenny Stead, Albert Pretorius, Sanda Shandu and Jane de Wet.
The play's idiosyncratic style is aided by an unsettling and fully enveloping approach to sound design headed by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder. The play had a strong opening night on Tuesday, 19 September, at the Star Theatre in Cape Town, with Galgut himself in attendance.
The play follows the deterioration of an Afrikaner family spanning four decades. It's a play in four parts, each chapter centring around a death in the Swart family.
The first death, the inciting incident, is of the family matriarch, who asks her husband to give their domestic worker a small piece of the family farm. Her husband agrees but never honours the promise.
The promise remains a point of tension in the family as decades go by and the family members dwindle. The Swart family history becomes a lens to view the larger history of South Africa, pre-and-post-apartheid.
The set design consists of a slanted main stage that immediately creates an uncanny and slightly uneasy atmosphere. The stage is used to tell multiple narrative threads in quick succession - it becomes a space that collapses both space and time.
The unsettling atmosphere is intensified by the skin-crawling sound design, which relies significantly on sounds created by mouths. The play's smooth choreography and actor coordination are nearly flawless - this is another contributor to the play's dream-like quality.
The creative use of props also ensures that the play's momentum rarely slows because one object can be used as a table, door, coffin, etc. The actors similarly fulfil multiple roles; Van Vuuren notably bounces between Anton and a priest in the story toward a jarring and comedic effect.
A near constant on the stage is the Swart family's domestic worker, Salome. She does all the important and overlooked background work for the family. Her work goes underappreciated and ignored, even though she fulfils an essential role in the family. Her labour is both physical and emotional, as she is a source of comfort for members of the Swart family.
Her character represents the exploitation of Black South Africans under the apartheid system and subsequent years after its abolition. Salome is also the one who tells the actual story of The Promise, which puts her at the very front of the narrative, too. She comments and reacts to the events of the story as she reads from a 'copy' of Galgut's original novel.
The Swart family is a properly dysfunctional bunch. Their refusal to give Salome the piece of land shows an unwillingness to give up even the smallest forms of power and control given to them during apartheid. It's made clear that the piece of land Salome lives on is useless, but members of the family hold onto it, seemingly out of principle.
The Promise may drain you due to its epic scope and fully-packed narrative. There are times when characters will announce that they are skipping scenes from the book to keep the story going. It's a meta wink to the audience that comments on the nature of time - how it doesn't stop or slow down and how it consumes the characters in the play.
The three-hour length is still a tall order, and it may be an instant turn-off for some viewers. The play does not take itself too seriously, though, as humour is a consistent element of its tone.
The Promise, On Stage, remains an utterly unique theatrical experience and the risks it takes in its storytelling mostly pay off.
Venue: The Star Theatre at the Homecoming Center in Cape Town.
Dates: 16 September to 6 October
Ticket prices: R200 - R300 via webtickets.
