The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, October 12, 1989-Page 41
Revolves around S. Africa's harsh realities
comes
By
SHELDON KIRSHNER
South Africa is a fairly honopic in Hollywood, as well it should be. The racial strife in that benighted nation has been steadily ifi-creasing, making South Africa a flashpoint of violence on the African continent:—
In the past few years, two major films dealing with the deteriorating South African situation have appeared — Cry Freedom and A World Apart.
Now comes a third, A Dry White Season, which premiered at the Festival of Festivals and is now playing at Famous Players theatres. . Like its predecessors,/! Dry White Season xt\o\\ts, around white people grap:
pling with the harsh reality of apartheid, that system of institutionalized segregation which is the root cause of the troubles in South Africa.
\x\ A Dry White Season, directed by EuzhanPalcy, Benjamin DuToit (Donald Sutherland), a gentle, well-adjusted Africaner schoolteacher, is caught up in the vortex of the struggle for justice and racial equality.
Du Toit's Black gar-" dener from Sowetq, Gordon (Winston Ntshona), is indignant about the welts and bruises on his son Jonathan's backside! Jonathan, having joined a peaceful demonstration to protest the second-rate nature of Black schools, has been beaten severely by
rampaging police. Du Toit, a humane man, is upset, but cautions Gordon to forget it. Nothing can be done, he says.
When Jonathan disappears, (jordon searches high and low for him, and enlists Du Toit's assistance. In league with Black lawyer (Zakes Mo-kae) and a sympathetic white journalist (Susan Sarandon), Du Toit launches a personal investigation, but comes up
"^rnpty-handed. Gordon, frantically, continues the search, meeting a tragic
: end'.;-r:: ,iConfronted by the bitter
in
opens season
MYRON LOVE
WINNIPEG -
Thanks to a mO(X) federal government Jobs Strategy grant in addition td regular funding frorri the
; Manitoba Arts-Souncil and Intercultural.Council, the provincev the City and the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, the Winnipeg; Jewish Theatre was able to ■ppen its first proper office in August and hire .staff, and launch its first formal season.
"We have reached the high level of professionalism that has been our goal," says Bev Aron-ovitch, the theatre's founding artistic director. "Although volunteers will _cpntinue to play an important role in all facets of our operations, we are using professional Equity actors as our leads and we are
^ -^working to become' as professional an acting company as any other;"
Aronovitch has long been inyblyed in amateur' theatre in Winni,/eg as a musical teacher and director. She started the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre in early ,1988 because she felt there was a lot going on cultur-
: ally in Jewish North America that Winnipeg was missing out on. Her goal was to bring Winnipeg audiences modem plays on Jewish themes, or plays written by Jevvish playwrights.
The Theatre's first offering, in the spring of 1988, was the one-woman production of Hannah Senesh. Last year, the WJT staged Today lama Fountain Pen about jgrowing up Jewish in northern Ontario in the 1940s, and/< Shay-na Maidel about a family reunion after the Second World War. _
Its first production this season is the .Canadian premiere of Ira Levin's Cantorial, Oct. 22-Nov. 4. The story is about a couple who move into a chic
Woody RomofT :
New York apartment that was once a synagogue. They find the synagogue comes with a ghostly cantor. To reprise his role as the cantor, the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre is bringing in Broadway star Woody Romofi", whose credits also include Barefoot in the Parkr The Soimd of: Music and Cabaret with Joel Grey.
"We had to Have him," says Aronovitch. "His is a key role. Because this is the Canadian premiere, he wanted to be a part of it: Ira Levin also encouraged him. We are really pleased."
Others in the cast include Ron Gabriel of Toronto and Martine Friesen of Winnipeg and local media personalities Charles Adler and Sylvia Ktizyk.
For its second show in May, Aronovitch is negotiating for the rights to The Golden Land, a musir cal written by former Mon-trealer Moshe Rubenfeld ahdZalmen Mlotek. The production, a history of the Jewish immigrant experience in America in song, ran off-BroadwayJn ■ 1985-86 for about a year" before touring the United States... This v^buld be its first revival. She is also negotiating with the original'New York director.
In additibn tb^^staging plays, the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre also offers acting classes. Last year, there were 10 students.
truth of Gordon's demise, Du Toit hires Mckenzie (Marlon Brando), a cynical white, anti-apartheid lawyer, to press charges against Stolz (Jurgen Prochnow), the government security agent who arrested, and interrogated, ordon ..i/c^^either-Susan (Janet Suzman), Du Toit's wife, nor Suzette (Susannah Harker), his daughter, are pleased by his dogged persistence
A Dry White Season, which was fihned in Zun-babwe, is adept in delineating two major processes — the radicali-zation of a liberal
to perform
at
TORONTO-
Ruthi Navon. one of Israel's top singing stars, will perform at the Lubavitch Women's League SukkOt Festival for Jewish Women's Songs of Celebration, for women only, Tuesday, Oct. 17, at 8 p.n). at the Leah Posluns . theatre. """Another perfonrier will be Gershon Wachtel, a pianist, vvho has performed Yiddish and classical music in Europe and Israel.
Navon has become a fill-. lyconimitted observant Jew. who haselected to channel her musical talents in ways that are halachically acceptable, forging a bonid with her all-women audiences, the Lubavitch Women's
Ruthi Navon
league said in their press release.
Tickets are available at the Negev and Israel's bookstore and from Lubavitch, 731 -7000, or after 5 p.m., 731-5347.
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Afrikaner and the breakup of his family. When Susan urges her husband to desist, she declares: "It's our country, Ben, we made every inch of it. Look at the rest of Africa — it's a mess. You have to choose your own people." Du Toit considei^ her stinging rebuke, then counters by saying that the "truth" is more important than Afrikanerdom.
The film, which unabashedly opposes the status quo, comes down hard on the concept of justice as it exists in South Africa.
McKenzie observes that justice and law are distant cousins. "Here in South Africa, they're simply not on spealdng terms at all," he says, neatly summing up South Africa's self-inflicted, tragedy;
Brando, , in his first screen appearance in nine years, is a model of self-restraint. Mumbling and sometimes fumbling for words, he demonstrates beyond a doubt that a minimalist interpretation of his role is quite in order.i
Like Brando, Sutheriand adopts a low-key approach..
It works, but Sutheriand's Canadian accent occasion- . ally pokes through his Afrikaner facade. Suzman ■is fine, as is Mokae, reput^ ediy South Africa's finest Black actor. Prochnow oscillates between civility and barbarianism.
A Dry White Season, in addition to successfully exposing the broad outlines of the needless conflict in South Africa, is generally moving as a filmic document of human . suflering. The ending, regrettably, is rather coarse, but by then, it has already made its point.
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