Why do we hurt those we love the most? Possibly not always with outright brutality, but through the deliberate lies or cruel words that too often characterise family life?

Dusk, a new one-act drama by local writer Mark Scheepers, has finally debuted at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre after delays caused by the successive Covid lockdowns. It’s a fitting moment for the play to hit the stage, as it brings its own story of death, sorrow and mental illness into a world already soaked in many challenges.

Dusk is set on a rural farm but its themes of emotional breakdown, deceit, betrayal and racism are relevant everywhere; so does a floating question: does God exist? And even then, do we actually want him to exist?

Loyiso MacDonald and Michelle Douglas on stage. Image: Lungelo Mbulwana

The action, directed by Palesa Mazamisa, takes place in a practical but cosy farmhouse kitchen designed by Karabo Legoabe-Mtshali. It begins with Tessa (Michelle Douglas) preparing lunch for her family. Although the play is in English, she starts to speak Afrikaans as she roves around with jittery, nervous movements, calling out to her husband Hannes and setting the table for their sons Rudy and Jantie. None of them is coming, we know that from the start, but we’re not sure why.

Tessa recreates the motions of that last encounter, talking to her absent family with the intensity of a woman driven mad by memories. Scheepers used to contribute to the health notes section of Destiny Man magazine, and that background has perhaps shaped his careful creation of Tessa’s character. 

She’s distracted, nervous and tense; she reaches for her tablets or twists a scarf in a menacing fashion before casually throwing it over her shoulders. Into the scene walks KG (Loyiso Macdonald) who grew up on the farm and was Jantie’s friend; he’s now a doctor coming back to work in the district, but his main concern is finding out what happened to Jantie on his ill-fated final visit.

Michelle Douglas as Tessa in Dusk. Image: Lungelo Mbulwana

Macdonald manages to portray a man who’s less confident than he’d like to appear, faced with the tricky task of encouraging a mad woman to confront her memories. He and Douglas play their parts brilliantly and the tension crackles between them. The music underscores their angst, as the unobtrusive aural undercurrent heightens the unease.

Twisted comments are threaded through the script and include Tessa urging KG to stay a little longer because a few more minutes won’t kill him. But the audience anxiously fears they might.

Their conversation interrogates our reactions to grief, with Tessa railing at the bland-but-barbed sympathies thrown out to the grieving. Your family is ripped away from you and all people can say is “it’s God’s plan”. “I’d rather people just said nothing,” Tessa says. “They want me to pack away my pain because they want to get away from the absolute horror that life is.”

Image: Lungelo Mbulwana

Mankind is appalling, KG adds later, questioning just who or what God must be if he created barbaric humans in his image. The story also brushes on the life of women who may feel like they “sacrifice” their future to get married and start a family; women who surrender themselves, and then somehow fade away, since, muses Tessa, wives and mothers aren’t seen as people who might have hopes and dreams of their own. That’s a theme for women to ponder over long after the tale concludes.

Dusk is only an hour long, but it’s wonderful to be back in the theatre and transported to a different time and place. Even if you’re happy to escape this tragic kitchen once the lights go up. DM/ML

Dusk runs at the Market Theatre until 29 August. Tickets from Webtickets.