October 14, 2005
By Lucille Davie
STEP inside a Greek corner café, which has been faithfully reproduced at the Laager Theatre, and, with a bunch of talented actors, live with the Papadopoulos family for a while.
This humorous and moving drama plays out behind the counter of the café in Irene Stephanou's play, Acropolis Café.
The equivalent of the township spaza shop, the corner café, ubiquitous in most white South African suburbs of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, is a place of friendly faces and hospitable Greek or Portuguese owners.
At the Acropolis Café, meet Stavros and Artemis Papadopoulos, the café owners. Earthy and warm, they are troubled by their children's career choices, resentful of being confused with their fellow Portuguese café owners and worried where South Africa is heading.
Robert Whitehead and Vanessa Cooke give highly credible performances, capturing exactly the friendliness of my corner café owners, as I remember them.
Both actors can boast a long list of successful productions at the Market Theatre, including Waiting for Godot, The Native who Caused all the Trouble, Arabian Nights, Ain't we Got Fun, This is for Keeps and Born in the RSA.
Whitehead has directed a number of plays and Cooke has directed Stephanou in Meze, Mira and Make-Up. Whitehead has featured in Isidingo and has done radio voice work in an acting career that goes back to 1976.
Cooke is a founder member of the Market Company and the head of the Market Theatre Laboratory, the training and development wing of the Market Theatre.
Stavros and Artemis, like any immigrants, have happy memories of growing up in their homeland, in this case Cyprus, a place that still lives passionately in their hearts.
Whitehead says, "This production of Acropolis Café is special to me and I thank the producers of Isidingo and the Market for making it possible for me to do [it]."
Their children, Lia and Leon, played by Benita Doria and Devlin Brown, are first-generation South African Greeks, growing up with the same dilemmas and conflicts with their parents as any other kids.
Leon wants to go off to India to learn to stand on his head, and Lia wants to study but her parents want her to marry a nice Greek dentist, make babies and cook Greek meals.
Working in the Acropolis Café too is Flora, a no-nonsense jack-of-all-trades assistant, who has the poor white shop assistant Boetie, pretty much under her thumb. Both are lovable, recognisable characters.
Flora, played by Meme Ditshego, an actor since 1995, is enterprising and personable, and, when the new South Africa dawns, lands on her feet.
Ditshego writes, directs and acts. She has a list of TV credits to her name, including Lost and Found, Generations, Orlando JV and Die Netwerk.
Boetie, played by Brian Webber, goes off into the big, wide world to try his hand at train conducting, but returns, aware that his life is poorer without the warm, family atmosphere of the Acropolis Café.
Webber has many productions under his belt, with television credits for Zero Tolerance, It Rained Last Night and The Delenta Files. He is well known for creating and playing the much-loved alien toddler character Dub in SABC's Tube Dub, watched by thousands of children across Africa.
He has also acted with Clive Owen, Sir Ian McKellen and Mick Jagger in Bent.
This is Stephanou's fourth play. She has written and performed in three successful one-woman shows: Stukkie Jols, Is Every Sperm Sacred? and Meze, Mira and Make-up. She has co-written a book, due out this year, entitled The World in an Orange - Creating Theatre with Barney Simon. It documents Simon's work at the Market Theatre.
Acropolis Café exudes delightful nostalgia and is a fond reflection on where we have come from.
The play is on until 13 November at the Laager Theatre, at the Market Theatre. Tickets are available at Computicket.
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