When Tony Bonani Miyambo rips down the backdrop behind him, there is complete silence. 

Playing the former ape turned “civilised” human Red Peter, Miyambo crumples the backdrop into a ball and slams it to the ground before immediately picking it back up and caressing it as he wails. He continues this back and forth, slamming and cradling, slamming and cradling, screaming while the rest of the room is completely silent, watching this inner turmoil play out before them. 

This is but one example of the complexity that Kafka’s Ape holds. Adapted from Franz Kafka’s short story “A Report to an Academy”, one can hardly miss how it takes on a new meaning when performed by a South African actor in a South African context.

Miyambo is brilliant in this piece. The inner turmoil his character faces between two conflicting identities, one by birth and the other brought about by survival, is the foundation on which his character rests, and he gives his entire body over to performing it on stage. 

This comes through quite clearly in the way he uses his voice to create uncannily real ape sounds – cries and screams so convincing you could almost start crying yourself, feeling the pain he’s enacting. There’s no looking away in this piece. With no one else on stage, everything rests on him – every movement, every sound, every shift in his body. He moves exactly like someone caught between ape and man would, leaping and swinging or hobbling around with his cane. 

By the end, there is spit on the stage, sweat running down his face, and the entire room is on their feet applauding, left contemplating his question: What is the identity of an evolving man?

Title: Kafka’s Ape
With: Tony Bonani Miyambo
Director: Phala Ookeditse Phala
Until: 4 April