Reviewer: Frederick B. Philander
Play: Leah B
Playwright: Tania Terblanche
In my view Tania Terblanch has creatively done exceptionally well writing her first fully-fledged contemporary play, Leah B, which was performed last weekend as part of the Theatre Zone of the National Theatre of Namibia.
Believe you me; I have seen worse first time and other efforts from established playwrights in my lifetime in theatre.
Her stage writing efforts give hope for a generation of female dramatists, long lacking. This has now finally, slowly and surely become a reality among Namibian women. Stage writing by Southern African women had always been a problem for many years.
Leah B, focuses on a very real social problem, female vulnerability within the Namibian penal/judiciary system in holding cells. I applaud the creative concept and give Tania full credit for creating plausible and convincing characters the audience could relate to and a well-written script.
To my mind these challenging characters offered the cast a magnitude of creative opportunities with which they could have gone to town. It is not often that such roles come around in local theatre.
Unfortunately, both actors and the director, in this case, Terblanche herself, interpretatively explored all opportunities.
Oh, I do understand the situation of playwrights having to write the stage work, direct it and sometimes are forced to have to act in them, but that doesn’t exonerate a playwright from not properly interpreting and judging his or her own creative work technically.
On the opening night of Leah B I observed a number of technical flaws and hitches such as dark spots or holes occurred in the play, rather very amateurish. The technical scene light-changes some times did not come on cue, those that did were in a number of cases creatively unnecessary, something that definitely spoiled the flow of the play in my opinion.
From a directorial point of view I would suggest a total cut out of the presentation of the “concert” scene in favour of the climax of the play, the raping of Leah B and the killing of the perpetrator of the deed.
In retrospect, despite above average ensemble acting in this scene and the rest of the play by the cast, this scene was unfortunately and unfairly weakened by childish and silly audience reaction.
In general it was an enjoyable play. Only time will tell whether the latent creative stage writing skills of Terblanche will grow and mature in her creative career to disprove that this was not just a once-off effort.