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Theatre News South Africa

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    Murder she wrote

    After last year's sold-out five-week workshop run at The Hampstead Downstairs - and before it returns to London this May - local audiences can experience powerful theatre in a new play about apartheid assassin Eugene "Prime Evil" de Kock.

    South Africa-born dramatist Nicholas Wright, who has written regularly for National Theatre in the UK, based A Human Being Died That Night on psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela's book of the same name. This, in turn, was based on her interviews with De Kock, who was sentenced to 212 years of imprisonment for his crimes.

    Murder she wrote

    In chilling detail that's sometimes hard to watch, Olivier Award-winning actress Noma Dumezweni and British actor Matthew Marsh recreate the interviews in a smoky prison cell. The play becomes more than just a fascinating insight into the mind of a murderer who could be deceiving his interviewer in the hope of a presidential pardon; it also explores her own inner anger as she attempts to discover who he truly is.

    Poor eyesight and a stutter

    So, how did a man who was disqualified from joining the South African Defence Force because of a stutter, and who was rejected from the South African Police's Special Task Force because of poor eyesight, become head of the apartheid regime's death squads? And was De Kock, a quiet boy verbally abused by his father and bullied by his schoolmates, genuinely repentant when he apologised at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

    Murder she wrote

    There are no easy answers to these and other questions about the capacity for evil and the possibility of forgiveness. Perhaps that's because the only way to accept the human being inside each monster is to accept the monster inside each human being.

    A Human Being Died That Night (PG-13) is at Cape Town's Fugard Theatre until 15 March and Johannesburg's Market Theatre from 19 March. Book at Computicket.

    About Eugene Yiga

    Eugene graduated from the University of Cape Town with distinctions in financial accounting and classical piano. He then spent over two-and-half years working in branding and communications at two of South Africa's top market research companies. Eugene also spent over three-and-a-half years at an eLearning start-up, all while building his business as an award-winning writer. Visit www.eugeneyiga.com, follow @eugeneyiga on Twitter, or email moc.agiyenegue@olleh to say, um, hello.
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