WeeklySA_AdminEPIC: This stage offering is adapted by Alex Burger from the popular novel of author and essayist Njabulo S. Ngcobo and will be burning the Market Theatre’s stages until March 23
By Jabu Kumalo
The excruciating pain of women who wait for their husbands forever to come back home can be taken for granted until you watch the stage play, The Cry of Winnie Mandela. The play centres around the tumultuous life of iconic struggle hero, Winnie Mandela.
The stirring performance of the five women and one man saw the leading actor who plays Winnie Mandela,
Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo shedding a little tear at the end of the play. Her performance was like saying: “Look at me now, I am back on the stage where I belong!” She played the character as though her whole life depended on it.
The MoMo Matsunyane-directed play kicks off with actor Les Nkosi narrating the stories of four characters who are magnificently portrayed by Rami Chuene, Ayanda Sibisi, Siyasanga Papu, Lesley Made, and Pulane Rampoana, who discover that their stories are almost similar as they share their heartbreak about their men who have seemingly gone “awol” out of their lives.
They keep on waiting and hoping to see the doors open and their cold houses swallowing their long absent husbands in.
Like the many years that the young Winnie Mandela waited until she aged, the women’s hopes never seem to wither even as the years and decades disappear into eternity. They are bound together by their common loss of men who have disappeared into thin air. Their bold exploration of toughness, resilience, waiting and sacrifices is brought into life in a painful way, though humorous at times, of what women whose husbands have left them literally holding the baby or worse, babies, go through in life.
This stage offering is adapted by Alex Burger from the popular novel of author and essayist Njabulo S. Ngcobo’s The Cry of Winnie Mandela. It will be burning the Market Theatre’s stages until 23 march 2025. The play is back after captivating audiences and critics alike at the Baxter Theatre.
The acting spirit of the women fits well into the shoes of the women who have been deserted by the men they loved with all their hearts.
They are able to walk and feel the pain, the suffering, everything that society and the in-laws throws at them, including accusations that it was their fault that their husbands left them. The isolation, longing and uncertainty sometimes is too much to bear, leading to “forced” infidelity for some.
The four women’s intimate conversations with “Winnie” (Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo), brings into stark reality what Mandela’s former wife went through as a human being during the absence of her husband.
The cruelty she endured from the Apartheid system, some in society that she loved so much and worse, her comrades who spewed her out when she needed them the most, are some of the moments that can melt even the hardest heart in the audience.
Pity the season is too short for such magnificent and important work in the history of our country. The acting is truly great. The actors gave their all to the characters they were portraying.
