It’s a show where everything literally goes wrong. KickstArt’s latest offering, the award-winning comedy The Play That Goes Wrong, heads to the Elizabeth Sneddon theatre next month.
The Independent on Saturday spoke to Durban actor Mthokozisi Zulu who plays Dennis, the actor who plays Perkins, the butler of the man who was murdered in the play.
“As an actor it’s hard for me not to laugh while acting. It’s crazy. I’ve never seen a play where everything goes wrong.
“The script is wrong, character-wise it’s wrong, the set is faulty, the director makes mistakes, the technician gives the wrong sound cues. Things collapse.
“Last week a pole nearly fell on my head. It’s supposed to fall, but not like that. So it’s a play where we’re risking our lives to give you a good laugh,” he says.
For the 27-year-old who wanted to be a pastor or a chef while growing up in Ulundi, Melmoth and Eshowe, it was only when the family moved to Durban in 2004 and he went to Glenwood High School that he fell in love with acting.
He saw a Themi Venturas high school production, The Wiz, at the Sneddon. “I fell in love with acting. I said, next year I’m going to be in the play, and I was. We did Annie and I was the shoe shiner. As I performed, I fell more and more in love with it. At the end of Grade 8 we had to choose subjects, and I chose drama though I’d never done it before.”
Actor Mthokozisi Zulu stars in the KickstArt production of The Play That Goes Wrong
Later, then drama teacher Shelley McLean invited the Glenwood boys to watch rehearsals of KickstArt’s Sleeping Beauty at the Performing Arts academy in Glenwood. “I was one of the few who went regularly and I fell even deeper in love.”
He went to the Durban University of Technology where he studied drama and now not only performs, but writes and directs theatre. He also does work on scripts and continuity for movies and TV series.
His first lead role was in Mashu The Musical by the late Venturas, and he’s had roles under director Daisy Spencer in Boesman and Lena and played Lucky in Waiting for Godot.
“I had to do this two-and-a- half-page monologue with no punctuation. It didn’t make any sense. I asked Daisy to cast someone else. She said, ‘Mtho, I believe in you’, and once I started I really enjoyed it. And now I am working with her.
“I’m in awe of the people I’m working with,” Zulu said.
ON POINT: Actor Mthokozisi Zulu stars in the KickstArt production of The Play That Goes Wrong. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng/African News Agency (ANA)
He has also directed his own play, The Crook’s Eye, based on his experiences of being mugged three times. It played in Durban and Johannesburg.
Zulu is just back from a residency at the Starke Stucke Festival in Frankfort, Germany. He was one of four international actors invited and he collaborated on Lions and Liquids, a play designed to prepare boys and girls for puberty.
“We had isiZulu in the play, we had gqom house music in the play.”
And the future?
“There’s more comedy and more films in Joburg, but at the end of the year I’m playing Buttons in Cinderella and there’s a Shakespeare project with the Joburg Youth Ballet.
“And there’s exploring YouTube. I’m really interested in how people press the right buttons to get people watching,” he says
The Play That Goes Wrong is at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre from April 6-29 with shows Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm, Saturday at 2.30pm and Sunday at 4pm.
Tickets R180-R230 through Computicket.