Purely by coincidence, three theatres across Joburg are presenting plays this month that are in the vein of tragic-comedy. This is not surprising as theatre of this kind produces laughter in dark times. So to ‘bounce back’ with a thrilling offering like this makes sense.

Last week the Theatre on the Square in Sandton became the home to Martin McDonagh’s viciously dark and brilliant The Beauty Queen of Leenane, a contemporary Irish classic about a 40-year-old daughter whose ageing mother is holding her back. 

From Friday 14 October, one can catch Edward Albee’s iconic American play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Pieter Toerien’s Monte Theatre. There you can spend an evening with husband and wife George and Martha who rope their younger dinner guests into a night of dangerous fun and games.

I’m fortunate enough to be connected to the third work on offer — a new version of Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco’s The Lesson playing at The Market Theatre. 

‘The Lesson’, written by Greg Homann starring Graham Hopkins and Lihle Ngubo. Image: Suzy Bernstein

‘The Lesson’, written by Greg Homann Image: Suzy Bernstein

‘The Lesson’ starring Fiona Ramsay. Image: Suzy Bernstein

The Lesson, the play written earliest amongst this buffet, can be considered a precursor to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf which was first staged in 1962. Eugène Ionesco is considered to be a founding father of a genre of theatre academically known as Theatre of the Absurd. His plays, alongside the work of others like Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, and French dramatists Jean Genet and Albert Camus, influenced a new movement in post-war theatre. They laid the path for a shift in direction for British and American writers like Edward Albee. 

This new direction challenged a kind of entrenched realism towards a more theatrical way to depict human psychology in crisis that far too often leads to violence. Martin McDonagh’s Beauty Queen of Leenane, first staged in 1996 is then a further development of this genre.  

When The Lesson was first performed in 1951 it was in the shadow of World War 2. The play was a comic parody of how toxic systems of culture and knowledge affect a younger generation. The focus of the original work was the indoctrination Europe had experienced through Fascism and the nationalist supremacy witnessed under the terrorisation of Hitler. It would be too premature, perhaps, to draw parallels today with Putin’s war, although somewhere in the mix these plays feel even more timely because of the current Russian threat.

In its new version, The Lesson has been created for a South African audience. It is set in a local university town. You might be able to guess which one? The initial idea to adapt this darkly entertaining Ionesco play was sparked by the national conversation and events surrounding #RhodesMustFall, along with the broader debates about decolonising education. 

The Lesson is an allegory though, and it is very playful while also being chilling. So although one way into the play is through the eyes of a colonial education system, the work can also be understood on other levels. It’s about gender and power, cultural oppression, and about the transaction between student and teacher. 

Like its genesis play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf explores relationship dynamics. Where The Lesson uses a professor and student power interplay as its focus, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf centres on the complexity of marriage. Beauty Queen of Leenane takes a mother and daughter relationship as its orbiting point.

Collectively, and purely by coincidence, this electrifying trilogy of plays that are available to be seen this month in Johannesburg sample a historical cross-section of an entire theatrical movement. They represent some of the best tragic-comedy there is in this style of theatre. A style that is designed to powerfully pull you into the theatre with humour and laughter, and then to turn in on itself, becoming something more sinister. 

Going to see The Lesson and ending with The Beauty Queen of Leenane, with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf sandwiched in between would give you a unique opportunity to connect the dots across an evolving genre of highly entertaining, thought-provoking, and above all, playful theatre that might just entice you to ‘bounce back’ to theatres again and again in our post-pandemic world. DM/ ML

Greg Homann is an award-winning director, dramaturge, playwright, and academic born in Johannesburg and now living in the UK. He is also the adaptor and director of The Market Theatre’s new version of The Lesson which is on until Sunday 30 October 2022. 

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf runs at Pieter Toerien’s Monte Theatre until Sunday 6 November 2022. The Beauty Queen of Leenane runs at the Theatre on the Square in Sandton until Saturday 29 October 2022.

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