THEATRE: Hope Beyond the Wall - BAC, SW11

Sabine Durrant
Tuesday 01 September 1992 18:02 EDT
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Indres Naidoo spent 10 years imprisoned on South Africa's Robben Island for crimes against Apartheid. He was forced to piss against the wall of his own cell, to wear blood-stained clothes, to follow a punishing, agonising regime of manual labour. And those were the good times. The bad, month upon month of them, were spent in solitary confinement.

This is his story - as adapted by Ajaykumar and Roy Leighton to mark the 80th anniversary of the ANC - and you might think it would be too gruelling for words. But Naidoo has found them, and their quirky fastidiousness offer a humorous commentary, a redeeming slant, on this life of hell.

The horror with which he discovers an absence of toilet paper] The disgust with which he describes 'what they describe as coffee'] They make you smile, these asides - not just for their polite inadequacy, but because their refinement reflects a larger rebellion of self-possession, a refusal to lie down before iniquity and injustice - on any level.

Ajaykumar's performance as Naidoo is stirring, but ragged - a little too casual at times - but the music, garnered from a collection of pipes, metal sheets and hub-cap drums, is mesmerising. And the singing of Amadou Saho - a voice of string and anguish - is worth the trip alone.

To 13 Sept. Box office: 071-223 2223

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