Based on a Franz Kafka’s short story, A Report to an Academy is the tale of Red Peter, an ape captured in the wilds of South Africa, but who managed to learn speech and has now reached the point of considering himself fully assimilated into being human. As such, Peter is presenting a lecture to the Species of the World Conference, detailing his life, education and his philosophising on his lot in life.
Loping onto stage, hunched, swinging arms and with a truly impressive mimicry of a simian gait, Bonani Tony Miyambo manages to utterly embody Red Peter with a finesse of touch that exemplifies the form of physical performance, not merely in the constant half crouch he holds himself in, but in the smallest twitches of arm and hand, from the smallest gestures to swinging and clambering on parts of the stage.
And it’s exactly that performativity that underlines the point of the play. It’s a performance where the humanity shines through precisely because of the disparity of seeing a man pretending to be an ape who is trying to be a man. It’s a powerful reworking of Kafka’s text, leaning into the performative aspects of both identity, and assimilation.
While it could be easy to read myriad shallow allegories into the themes of pretence and impersonation as well as the literal ‘ape-acting’, the show is doing a lot more by playing itself straight and taking a broad-barrel swing toward society and cultural oppression in general. Red Peter isn’t simply a personification of slavery, apartheid, colonialism or assimilative forces of culture on immigrants with any flat simplicity. Instead, he’s the ultimate voice of the other, an ape who has consciously chosen to affect the un-ape in his every act, but also one who did so out of self-protection and still bears the shame and self-loathing as he reaps the seeming rewards lauded on him.
Miyambo plays the piece with a vitality and brimming power that feels like it is bound in him like a compressed spring. His quieter moments and gentleness only contrast more fully the occasional moments of rage, frustration and no small level of resenting guilt, despite Red Peter’s seeming reassurances that he is satisfied.
KAFKA'S APE is a performance and a play that stuns like a thunderbolt and genuinely feels like the top-drawer theatre that it is. An experience which has already collected accolades and deserves to be recognised and seen worldwide.