‘The theatre and its precincts occupy a spacious site extending over several city blocks.’
2 Civic Theatre Subcommittee, ‘Copy for leaflet’.Dürrenmatt’s
Der Besuch der alten Dame featured prominently during the Johannesburg Civic’s opening celebrations. It was translated for the occasion by the Afrikaans playwright Bartho Smit, a key member of the Sestigers and one of the most important Afrikaans playwrights to emerge in the 1960s
. Directed by the Belgian director Fred Engelen, it was staged from 29 October to 3 November by the newly formed Afrikaans Theatre Committee of Johannesburg with the title
Die besoek van die ou dame.
3 Direction was by Fred Engelen, set design by Kobus Esterhuysen, and costume design by Ivor Kirsten. The lead roles were played by Anna Neethling-Pohl, Jan Schutte, Jan Bruijns, Pieter Geldenhuys, Dirk de Villiers, Morné Coetzer, Mike Heine, Sann de Lange, Jacques Loots, and Louis van Niekerk. The rest of the cast consisted of Phil Marais, Dick Kukard, Fanie Malan, Freddie de Villiers, Hendrik Dique, Lana Pienaar, Cas Swanepoel, Bella Oosthuizen, Wilma Loots, Ernst Budricks, Frances Coertze, Floris Mostert, Willie Steyn, Louis van der Walt, Tom Ackerman, Francois de Bruyn, Martie Lee, Ena Marais, Madel Wolmarans, Johan Kirsten, Lorenz Schultz, Lukas du Preez, Pieter Viljoen, Willie van Heerden, Barend Grobbelaar, Johan van Zyl, and Manie Redelinghuys. This was Dürrenmatt’s South African premiere, and it couldn’t have been more different from Schiess’s passionate and daring, but modest, introduction of Frisch.
In an environment where professional Afrikaans theatre was still a rarity, Die besoek was one of the most ambitious productions ever staged in that language. The financial outlay, alone, was staggering. Thirty-eight actors were hired, and 150 costumes were made. The cost of dresses made for the character of the old lady alone amounted to R3,600, thus R450,000 according to today’s values. She went through thirty cigars each night; adjusted for inflation, this cost over R3,500 per performance. Music was commissioned from the Portuguese-born guitarist Gilberto Bonegio, while stereophonic recordings of speeding trains helped create, on a vast Johannesburg stage, the impoverished fictional Swiss town of Güllen – its name slyly echoing ‘Gülle’, German for ‘liquid manure’.
Considered a risky production to put on for an Afrikaans public ‘that rarely gets to see the best’, the play received rave reviews.
4 ‘wat selde die beste te sien kry’. ‘’n Brief van Krisjan aan Kerneels: Die ‘Ou Dame’ het mense 300 myl laat ry’, Sondagnuus en Dagbreek, 4 November 1962. One journalist went so far as to regard it as proof that there
were quality actors and actresses among the ranks of Afrikaans players after all.
5 F. H. ‘Afr toneel is ryk aan goeie spelers’, Die Transvaler, 30 October 1962. This particular journalist also hailed
Die Besoek as new benchmark for Afrikaans theatre, remarking on the irony that it took a Swiss play to create such a precedent. Recognizing the play’s ‘significant intrinsic value in Afrikaans’, others forgot that it was a translation.
6 ‘veelseggende eiewaarde in Afrikaans’. André Scheepers, ‘Klassieke vertalings: Bartho Smit doen dit weer’, Die Vaderland, 3 February 1986. With it, the Afrikaans Theatre Committee of Johannesburg had managed an unprecedented feat, ‘to seize the public’s imagination with the performance of an Afrikaans play’ so that they were willing to drive 300 miles to see it.
7 ‘om die publiek se verbeelding aan te gryp met die opvoering van ’n Afrikaanse toneelstuk’. ‘’n Brief van Krisjan aan Kerneels: Die ‘Ou Dame’ het mense 300 myl laat ry’. After the first performance on 8 November, a copy of the printed text was even presented to State President C. R. Swart.
8 Ulrich Stark, ‘Makabere besoek van die ou dame’, Die Vaderland, 30 October 1962. Thus, in 1962, white Afrikaners claimed a Dürrenmatt play as their own, appropriating a Swiss author who eventually became ‘one of the great influences on recent Afrikaans literature’.
9 Mario Schiess, ‘Meeting Dürrenmatt’.