An exquisitely scripted one-act play Hansard has popped onto the Cape Town theatre scene to set the bar high for the 2023 season.
The wordplay in the two-hander is sharp as it plays on ideas of language and politics, sitting in that space where the two influence each other. It deftly shows how the very line that you think separates language and politics is very thin.
The personal is political and vice versa, because of the way we use words.
Hansard is the language service of the British parliament – the official record of proceedings.
The South African version of the same service has a hard job trying to decide whether to ensure the English version of a speech made in a different language includes original mistakes or to clean up the language and make the politician sound cleverer than they are.
In the same way, creating a matter of record historical events depends greatly on what words the recorder of the history uses.
Set in 1988 England, the script would have to change very little to be contemporary, and it is an indictment of the closemindedness of people that the underlying actions that propel the story are still very much at play right now.
The 80-minute play sees UK member of parliament Robin Hesketh (Hopkins) home for the weekend, a tad miffed that his wife is still in her pyjamas. They engage in the kind of banter we associate with a long-married couple who have buried family skeletons very deeply. But, you quickly realise she wants to tell him something she doesn’t think he wants to hear.
Fiona Ramsey’s Diane Hesketh is a woman on a mission – she has something to say and it must be out. While Diane’s under-the-breath digs at Robin initially elicit barrels of laughter from the audience, we quickly realise there is something rather brittle about this woman.
The banter ebbs and flows between surface remarks, vicious digs and tentative stabs at trying to explain what she is feeling, deep in her heart.
But, Robin the quintessential, public school-educated Brit, doesn’t want to get to grips with the real deep-down secrets, lest he has to look himself in the face.
Pay attention because the jibes come thick and fast, but it’s a meaty play that will keep you thinking long after you leave the theatre.
The words we use matter and if you still don’t understand why people get hot under the collar about personal pronouns or what words are acceptable or not, go watch this and you might gain some insight.
