Family reunions bring out a tendency in siblings to regress. They act like they did when the cookie jar was still out of reach, and chasing your brother around the dinner table was common practice before the family could sit down to eat.
Family reunions bring out a tendency in siblings to regress. They act like they did when the cookie jar was still out of reach, and chasing your brother around the dinner table was common practice before the family could sit down to eat.
This is what the actors of Sylvaine Strike (director) and Craig Higginson's (writer) The Table presented to their audience at Victoria Theatre in the show's début performance on Thursday afternoon.
An eclectic Jewish-South African family come together for dinner to honour and remember their late father a year after his death. As the meal progresses, a secret that is revealed prompts the release and unfolding of more secrets and well-guarded emotions that might shake any family to its very foundations.
The play made me question what it really means to open your home and your heart to other people, and what it means to be a family. The actors all created vivid characters that were funny and fascinating to watch.
The direction was superb and the interjections of pure physical expression, intertwined with the plot, made the performance something out of the ordinary and a visually compelling spectacle. Rhodes University Dean of Students Vivian de Klerk was seen leaving the performance and told Grocott's Mail that she found The Table "Funny, thought-provoking, and very human. I loved it."
The climax and resolution of the plot sent shivers down my spine, and moved me even more when I discovered after the show that parts of the story are based on true events in the director's husband's family history.
Unfortunately The Table will not be performed in Grahamstown after Saturday 2 July, but the National Arts Festival hosted its first ever showing, and it will move to the Market’s Laager Theatre, in Johannesburg, from 3 August to 18 September 18, and at the Aardklop Festival, in Potchefstroom, from 4 to 9 October.
