Real life Eastern Cape men and women are at the heart of Monde Ngonyama’s new play The Master Key, which opens at the PE Opera House on Wednesday night.
Directed by Xabiso Zweni, who also plays the main character known as Saint, The Master Key will run at the Barn Theatre until Saturday September 29.
Bay playwright Ngonyama said he wrote the play to look back at the effect apartheid had on individual lives in the 1980s, moving between the University of Fort Hare and the town of Kirkwood.
“It is set in the Eastern Cape of the 1980s, as this is when I was arrested, and The Master Key is based on what I observed when I was in the prison cells,” Ngonyama said in an interview ahead of opening night.
And, to give his cast an authentic insight, he planned to take them to visit Kirkwood Police Station yesterday.
As well as Saint, the other characters in the cast of four are the town magistrate played by Anele Penny, a policewoman (Olwethu Mdala) and a prisoner who was awaiting trial for killing her abusive husband (Nobesuthu Rayi).
Ngonyama outlined how Saint came into being.
“I’ve fused many stories into one but basically there was this man, Bontse Belani, who was known as the most famous petty thief of his day.
“They say he could steal anything from white children in their prams to guavas in a shop and I got to know this fellow while I was in Kirkwood.
“The district surgeon in Kirkwood at the time did not have an assistant for autopsies and so this guy used to help him perform autopsies – but he was a prisoner.
“He’s a real character but I’ve given him a new name, the Saint, and I fused his story with that of a guy I used to know at Fort Hare who was on his way to exile.
“The Saint knows the magistrate but the magistrate doesn’t know him – or at least, he doesn’t recognise him.”
To complicate the picture, the magistrate is having an extra-marital affair with the policewoman, and the beautiful prisoner may well be willing to use her charms to manoeuvre her way out of jail time. But who does she listen to – the Saint or the magistrate?
The intersections of these stories provide the drama and, as the playwright says, “the lives around them are messy – everyone needs a master key”.
Ngonyama hopes to take the play, which is an hour long, to the National Arts Festival next year.
The Master Key is at 7pm each night, with a 2pm matinee on Saturday as well.
Tickets are R100 single, R150 (double) and R50 for students.
Inquiries: Cingiwe Skosana, 041-585-1300.