And The Girls In Their Sunday Dresses

Two women struggle across the stage, one dragging a shabby chair behind her, which she stops and rests on from time to time. She carries the chair everywhere, we discover: government offices, post offices, food queues. It’s to give her somewhere to sit during the interminable waiting she has to endure. The duo is heading to a rice queue today, where they will be waiting for the next few days.

Like a South African Waiting for Godot, Zakes Mda’s touching two hander And The Girls in Their Sunday Dresses poses some tough existential questions – but here, it’s against the all-too-real backdrop of apartheid South Africa, with poverty, discrimination and plenty of bickering. The women bow to their white ‘masters’ and grimly remember the skin whitening creams that wreaked such havoc on their complexions.

Yet Mda introduces the racial issues with an admirable lightness of touch by focusing on the personal stories of the two characters. The younger, an ageing prostitute who’s unashamed of her profession, is played with posturing pride by an excellent Hlengiwe Lushaba, full of attitude yet fragile and easily broken. Her reluctant companion, the former wife of a white businessman, abandoned and left to pay her way with house cleaning, is less vividly characterised by Lesego Motsepe.

Princess Mhlongo’s production takes its time unravelling the two women’s stories, although its slight sense of directionless is in keeping with the play’s themes. And the bilingual speech—in Xhosa and English—takes some getting used to. But the play’s concluding act of defiance sounds a surprising but welcome positive note.