Review: Man up a Tree

By Dion van Niekerk

How disappointing. And it breaks my heart to have to say that about an Ellis Pearson show, because Pearson has been one of the cornerstones of the Festival since I can remember. His work has always been professional, engaging, fun and thought provoking. But Man up a Tree is lacking on all those fronts.

Even though it was street theatre and therefore free, I still felt robbed.

There was a time when Pearson would stretch his imagination to breaking point trying to find just the right story or theatrical image to convey his concerns with the South African condition. His was never the role of preacher, but rather of story-teller, and it was the excited energy he brought to story-telling that kept his audiences enthralled.

Very little of that this year, I’m afraid. Pearson and partner (not Mtshali, like programme says) stumble over the lines of some poor scripting and cheap audience involvement tricks to bring us all to the startling (!) conclusion that perhaps the best way to save the environment is by planting a tree. Even the four year old sitting next to me showed irritation at being so unskillfully patronized. Much of Pearson’s monologueing, in a tired attempt at an accent, came across as a live advertisement for the Wildlands Conservation Trust. I mean, please, I know how to read, so why not just give me the pamphlet?

This is the environmental equivalent of agit-prop theatre where the performers unashamedly attempt to ram their political agenda down the audience’s throats. It is theatre that just barely manages to pass itself off as an art form. I too am concerned about the way humankind is engaging with its world. I too am skeptical of the supposed benefits of certain types of “development” in poorer communities. But these are actually complex and complicated issues and I don’t need to be hearing that I should plant a tree (I did that back in the eighties). I also don’t need to be volleyballing an inflated planet earth, because that isn’t helping me to understand how I’m responsible for the lowering water tables in my neighbourhood.

What I need, is a carefully crafted, provocative vision of the world working together to air its problems and to find common workable solutions. Ellis Pearson used to offer those kinds of visions…….

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