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White Men With Weapons Union Hall Until Sun 19 March South African Greig Coetzee seizes and tears up (and other like metaphors) the stage literally and literarily in his one man performance 'White Men With Weapons'. The piece involves his re-enacting a series of memorable and often hilarious characters he observed whilst serving as a conscript in the South African Defence Force at the start of the 1990's. During this time, we discover here in the reactions of the reactionary military establishment, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and his party, the African National Congress, was made legal. The seasoned soldiers in particular are struck with anger and disbelief at having their ideological and political base so suddenly swept from beneath them. Coetzee's brilliance lies primarily in his ability to, in both his writing and acting, humanise what could easily otherwise be vicious, unsympathetic, and detached stereotypes. Shuffling through an assortment of characters of divergent politics and physical habits, Coetzee manages to display a sympathetic frailty and humanity in each despite their sometimes overt bigotry. The effect is that the general perception of the old South African army as a soulless instrument of apartheid is very much overturned. Rather we are shown it as a confused mess of humanity and inhumanity that is as funny and ridiculous as it was miserable, and certainly not beyond the empathy of audiences, even those as detached by time and space as we are.  |
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