Mime, masks, no words, a funny little set. As long as you’ve got talented mimes you could throw almost anything into that and make a play that’ll appeal to a certain audience.

Like, how about we try having two main characters who are in…a butcher shop (lots of opportunity for macabre situations). One character’s parents have died tragically and he drowns his sorrows in alcohol. The other character looks after him, keeps things together. Ok. Let’s throw in…a baby. Yes! The alcoholic won’t like it at first but he’ll be won over as we all predictably are. But the baby was dumped by a kidnapper and he wants it back. And there’s meat cleavers and mincing machines close at hand…murder is inevitable.

You get the picture. All too quickly, and told all too slowly.

The Butcher Brothers, I’m genuinely sorry to say, left me lukewarm.

Mongi Mthombeni was great as the spindly-legged butcher shop owner and Jacques de Silva as his handlanger was equally brilliant in what is a very demanding type of theatre. It was the direction of  fast-rising star Daniel Buckland, and later, Sylvaine Strike, that was disappointing.

The mime-and-mask genre has been tried-and-tested and pretty near perfected on occasion by Kulumakahle: From The Hip, who embrace this genre because it is a company that chooses to work with hearing-impaired actors.

I’m not sure why one would choose to do it unless you had a plan to improve it, make a new mark.

This work didn’t. It felt a tad stale. Tired. Done. And done better. And these are some of the new young stars of  South African theatre. If they are not going to be moving us forward, challenging us, breaking new ground – even if we think it might be kak – who will?

My main beef with The Butcher Brothers comes down to it being far too drawn out. Perhaps I’m just impatient but I find often in this mime-and-masks genre, there’s far too much redundancy. It is as if, because they have no words, the actors are directed to try make absolutely certain we’ve got whatever it is they’re on about. We’ve got it already! You drink too much. Move on! Next!

If you want to give me mime with masks then make it fast paced. Stage it like those lithographic panels in Frank Miller’s Sin City, the one’s that don’t have any text. That’ll impress me.

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