Dancing the Death Drill is a high-kicking musical of note

By Jojokhala C. Mei

Intelligent, historical, and very busy, the musical Dancing The Death Drill tells the story of a young mixed-blood daring South African country man who survives the sinking of the SS Mendi warship during the First World War, only to be court marshalled for mutiny. As if that were not enough, Directors James Ngcobo and Palesa Mazamisa dare to prune Fred Khumalo’s accomplished heavy 2017 novel of the same name, inventing its entertainment as a high-kicking musical of note.

 “On 21 February 1917 a large cargo steamship, Darro, collided with her in the English Channel south of the Isle of Wight.  Mendi sank, killing 646 people, mostly black South African troops, as well as white Southern African officers and NCOs, and crew,” according to Wikipedia. The stage play confirms that the Blacks were mere battlefield porters and ‘hewers of wood’ for the white soldiers who feared the Blacks would use their newfound marksmanship to fight for their own freedom back in South Africa. This huge irony is only one of many ironies that are played out with aplomb by all on stage.

Luyanda Sidiya’s evocative and breath-taking dance choreography literally breathes new life to a heavy war story, to a stirring musical score by contemporary trademark composer/singer/songwriter Msaki to boot.

The high-octane cast is led by matured one-time TV soapie actor Clint Brink playing the  too guarded lead Pitso Motaung; whilst the free wise spirit of his lover Marie Therese is struck alive by actress Sharon Spiegel Wagner.  In the novel Pitso was happy to lose himself in her arms behind locked doors, but on stage he holds himself back for dear life. Surely Clint knows better about stage acting.

 When I quizzed the young Mazamisa of deep conviction if the stage adaptation copies the first 2018 British stage adaptation script, she blurts “NO” with soft devastating gravitas.  She says a paramount drive for staging the musical is to tell largely our forgotten history-cum-heritage in the First World War. But The Mendi War Memorial exists in Attridgeville township in Tshwane, Gauteng. And in the Eastern Cape province the Gqeberha city township of New Brighton is sliced through by the famous Mendi Road.  Previous efforts to even erect a Gqeberha memorial to the ship sinking have repeatedly floundered. Yet, the magisterial poetic lament by Xhosa-language poet Laurette SEK Mqhayi, called Ukutshona kukaMendi (Sinking Of The Mendi) roars in the ears of everyone who memorized the poem at school.

Coincidentally, that first stage adaptation was done by the British thespian of Nigerian descent, Gbolahan Obisesan, whose guarded stage play The Fishermen I once saw at the Market Theatre  under the fine direction of the same James Ngcobo.

 Dancing The Death Drill performance doesn’t disappoint. Pitso’s lucky survival of the dramatic sinking turns out by bleeding irony to misfortunes as bad as mutiny or military insubordination. Oh, to hear the boisterous Sibusiso Mkhize and riveting vocal powerhouse Lerato Gwebu as Wing narrators; or what Mazamisa affectionately calls “troubadours”, since James and her invented the two characters to ‘fly the novel’s heavy-hearted narration.

 The epic song and dance lifts Pitso’s heritage and life prospects to the grandiose level like the walk on stills in Lebo M’s stage play The Lion King; or the master puppetry of the Handspring Puppet company in Jane Taylor and William Kentridge’s stage play Ubu Roi And The Truth Commission. But the too plain stage scenery short changes even the bleakest nights at sea or above the Free State veld plains.  Not a single national flag flies as a timely reminder of whose war it really was.

 Pitso comes of age at the turn of the century, from late 1800s to early 1900s, under the still persisting South African racial identity backwardness plays out as ‘flashback’ memories that are s encapsulated in those dated stinging “half-breed” rebukes against him. Shamefully colourism still rears its ugly head as popular” Yellow Bone” snotty compliments. Needless to say, no character in the stage play would pull colourism on the deceased revered politician Walter Sisulu, and the deceased muliti-cultural Sophiatown poet-laureate, Don Mattera.

 Sea life up to the sinking of SS MENDI plays out as Pitso’s flashback memories of black seafaring heritage which his stage fellows play out from his perspective and dance to under his watchful eye. Ironically, this could be only for him, while some of the black men from coastal Wild Coast and KZN villages should have remained unmoved and seated when others were caught in a trance to see the sea for the first time.

 Black seafaring heritage has always been carefully hidden from us. Even at school In South Africa the Amistad Affair is a top secret: ‘arising from the mutiny of African slaves on the “Amistad” seized off Long Island (1841) which led to the successful defence of them as freemen by former Pres. John Quincy Adams before the U.S, Supreme Court., according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

The order of events in the musical and Pitso’s life is often haphazard flashbacks or memories. Case in point is Pitso shattered by news of his friend Tladi’s death well before Tladi plays with grotesque carnival bravura by actor, Ontiretse Manyetsa. Yet all to comes to nought in death.

Maybe it’s safe enough to compare the musical to the 1963 staging of Peter Weiss’ adapted novel Marat Sade. The full title name is: The Persecution And Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by The Inmates OfThe Asylum Of Charenton Under The Direction Of The Marquis de Sade. It is also based on a book of the same name, and ‘a depiction of class struggle and human suffering that asks whether true revolution comes from changing society or changing oneself.

‘The Marquis de Sade, the man after whom sadism is named, did indeed direct performances in Charenton with other inmates there, encouraged by Coulmier. De Sade is a main character in the play, conducting many philosophical dialogues with Marat and observing the proceedings with sardonic amusement. He remains detached and cares little for practical politics and the inmates’ talk of right and justice; he simply stands by as an observer and an advocate of his own nihilistic and individualist beliefs.’

Pitso’s performance grew deeply detached or alienated for my liking. Not that it brought him anywhere close to German theatre maestro Bertolt Brecht’s alienation style which prompted deeper thought But then again, the song and dance lifted my spirits and won me over. The production ran at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre until the Sunday 28 September  2025 3pm matinee.