In keeping with the fully international status of the Festival, one of the world premières, ‘Good Evening’, is a British play by the award-winning Roy Smiles. Another, ‘The Story of The African Choir’, is created and directed by British director Jane Collins for the Market Theatre Laboratory. The list is completed with two brand new South African works: ‘Interracial by’ Paul Grootboom and ‘Dream of the Dog’ by Craig Higginson.

Pieces that have been seen elsewhere but never before in South Africa include ‘Reach’ by Lara Foot Newton, Mark Fleishman's ‘Every Year, Every Day, I am Walking’, French mime artist Philippe Ménard's ‘Ascenseur, fantasmagorie pour élever les gens et les fardeaux’ and David Harrower's ‘Blackbird’ which was commissioned for the Edinburgh Festival where it played to resounding acclaim.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

The production première of Edward Albee's ‘Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ strides in to take the place reserved for classics on the Festival theatre bill. Direction is by Janice Honeyman with Sean Taylor, Fiona Ramsay, Nicholas Pauling and Erica Wessels as the foursome of inebriated intellectuals locked in a succession of vicious verbal games.

The central character in Lara Foot Newton's ‘Reach’ is exhausted by age, grief and the horror of a memory time will not erase. In her darkest hour she receives a visitation from an unlikely angel of mercy: a streetwise loxsheen teenager with the power to warm her heart again. This is a Baxter Theatre presentation, directed by Clare Stopford with Aletta Bezuidenhout and Mbulelo Grootboom.

Craig Higginson's ‘Dream of the Dog’, directed by Malcolm Purkey, features another kind of "madam" and her unexpected visitor is an angry young urbanite she knew as an eager-to-please farm boy. He compels her to traverse the fault-lines of memory and open the Pandora's box of the past. They are equally shocked by the ghastly secrets that confront them.

The Story of The African Choir

Self-evaluation and disillusionment of a different kind are at the centre of ‘The Story of The African Choir’. The play is based on real events: a group of young black singers set off on a fund-raising tour of England and Scotland in the late nineteenth century. The reality of Victorian audiences, the hidden motives for the tour, betrayal and financial disaster all help to destabilise their notions of themselves as members of an educated black elite.

‘Good Evening’ is another show business story based on fact. It tells how four young men, fresh from university, changed their own lives and the course of British theatre with their revue ‘Beyond the Fringe’.

Rewriting the rules of satire, they earned instant fame which altered the course of life for each of them: Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. Pieter Toerien Productions scooped this world première for the Festival. Alan Swerdlow directs a cast headed up by Graham Hopkins and Malcolm Terrey.

Evita for President!

Back on home territory, Paul Grootboom's ‘Interracial’ suggests that contemporary connections over social lines are still problematic. White Mike thought he was liberal until his wife started having an affair with black Melvin. Legions of ugly old prejudices start rattling their chains in both camps.

Rattling her charm bracelets, Evita Bezuidenhout is back in a Pieter-Dirk Uys satiric confection: ‘Evita for President!’ With the ANC's top job up for grabs, the freshly manicured tannie flutters her false eyelashes at political folly.

Sexuality is the fulcrum of David Harrower's ‘Blackbird’ — an alarming investigation of the illegal relationship between a man in his 40s and a 12-year-old girl.

Another foreign offering, ‘In the Continuum’, is the first theatre piece from the USA we have seen at the Festival for a while. But its subject matter couldn't be closer to home. Two young black women — one in Los Angeles and one in Harare — experience a kaleidoscopic, darkly comic weekend of self-revelations in the time of HIV/Aids. It is directed by Robert O'Hara with writer/performers Danai Gurira and Nikkola Salter, both voices from the African diaspora.

Performance itself is the subject of Philippe Ménard's ‘Ascenseur, fantasmagorie pour élever les gens et les fardeaux’. This distinguished French mime artist and juggler takes us on an imaginary elevator ride, introducing a range of different people through acting, juggling and film clips.

In addition to the main Festival programme, there are numerous other opportunities for festinos to experience the fun of theatre as well as its cathartic benefits.

On the Fringe, a full theatre programme across many genres features big names and sparkling newcomers. In fact you could devote your entire Festival visit to theatre and you still wouldn't even begin to exhaust the possibilities on offer.

For further information about the National Arts Festival contact 046 603 1103 or visit the website www.nafest.co.za