As the lights dim at the Cort Theatre on Broadway, one wishes with all one's heart for success in the theater and in life for the innocent young South African blacks--supplemented by one from East Hampton, New York, and another from As the World Turns--struggling so bravely for justice and racial equality, as are we all. The reviews have been ecstatic from virtually every New York daily and weekly: "A fantastic explosion of theatrical energy!" "Sarafina! bubbles with enthusiasm, humor, righteous anger, passion and unquenchable hope." "Sarafina! is alive with triumph, the music is glorious, the performances vibrant. It sends you whirling out into the street in a state of dizzy exhilaration."
The audience, judging by its reactions to certain lines delivered by the cast, does not know much about South Africa. Nor does it learn much. The last theatrical work I saw by Mbongeni Ngema was Woza Albert! (he was one of its three authors) at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, where the talented cast members spoke their lines in beautiful, clear English. The engaging young lead of Sarafina!--who delivers her narrative passages in an odd, incantational singsong--pronounces "future" as "footah,' and "law" as "low." Her English, heart-breakingly, is often impenetrable. Aside from the proper names (Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Sharpeville, Soweto), the audience is lucky to catch much more than one word in ten.
Theatrics Prevail
Not, I suppose, that it makes that much difference. The explosive singing and dancing, with interspersed narratives and dramatic playlets screeched out as if God had not yet invented chest microphones, is the rough equivalent of the theatrical and musical entertainments put on at halftime of American football games for the supporters of the Dallas Cowboys. If you root for the Cowboys, you are quite carried away. If not, perhaps less so. The function of the performance is only secondarily artistic. Sarafina!, similarly, is simply a political rally set to music and, unfortunately, rather awkwardly performed and choreographed. If it weren't for the high seriousness of the subject, I am not certain New York theater critics would have given the show much better reviews than they would give the cheerleaders from Dallas. One critic, in fact, John Simon of New York Magazine--author of one of the eulogistic tributes quoted above--had second thoughts when he re-saw Sarafina! upon its transfer from Lincoln Center to Broadway. At this second viewing, he said the show left him "cold."
With the aid of the program, I am able to reconstruct some examples of the explosive verse that serves as a basis for all this polemical singing and dancing. First, "Meeting Tonight," music and lyrics by Hugh Masekela:
There's gonna be a meeting tonight
There's a state of emergency
We protest
This state of emergency
It was the President of State
Who declared this emergency
We protest
This state of emergency
Down with the army
And down with the
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