REVIEW: The Girl In The Green Jumper

The Girl In The Green Jumper at The Playground Theatre, part of the Gail Louw festival, is not your ordinary theatre experience. Coupled with a carefully curated Cyril Mann exhibition at Piano Noble, it transcends the boundaries of conventional drama, offering an immersive journey into the stormy relationship between an artist and his muse, partner, and wife. The exhibition sets the stage for the emotional rollercoaster to come. Meeting Renske, Cyril’s wife, whose autobiography served as inspiration for Gail Louw text, was a key moment in my experience of the play. Our conversation provided me with invaluable context, informative and emotional. She passionately pointed out details from the paintings to me, explaining their significance in the upcoming performance and urging me to remember them. I felt myself becoming an extension of her own memory. Each detail she emphasized felt like a thread connecting me to the story on stage. 

Gail Louw masterfully condenses two decades of life into a 90-minute emotional performance, capturing the essence of a complex dance between light and shadow, love and turmoil, youthfulness and agedness. The chemistry between the characters is palpable, fuelled by both admiration and inner conflicts. The text is augmented by moments of movement, Cyril and Renske being trapped in a sort of tango of unspoken pain. The seamless mixture between spoken word and choreography confers the story a sense of fluidity, enhancing the theatrical experience. 

The play unfolds in two parts, reflecting the evolution of the characters’ relationship. From Renske’s youthful adoration to her emergence as an independent woman, the dynamics shift, revealing layers of depth and complexity.  Cyril’s obsessive pursuit of sunlight becomes a metaphor for his artistic quest, culminating in a touching ending where he finally dissipates into the light he so desperately tried to capture in his work.

The production abounds in cinematic elements, from the amazing soundtrack featuring a haunting Jacques Brel, a distorted Joe Cocker’s You are so Beautiful and much more to the evocative projection of Cyril’s paintings and his last letter to his wife. The stage set is reproducing details from the paintings that must have acted as memory triggers for Renske at the time she wrote her book. Its clever design encapsulates the claustrophobic nature of the relationship.

The actors deliver standout performances, with Natalie Ava Nasr skilfully navigating an authentic rhythmic accent to complement Peter Tate’s elaborated phrasing.
Even though completely immersed in the play, I found myself from time to time irresistibly drawn to the real Renske seated in the audience. Sometimes she nodded ever so slightly in approval, adding an extra layer of authenticity to the entire experience. Her presence is a reminder that the emotions on stage are not just fictional, but rooted in reality, raw, honest and unfiltered. Every aspect of the production feels like an animated canvas projected on stage, meticulously crafted by Gail Louw. 

The Girl In The Green Jumper is an unmissable theatrical experience that transcends the boundaries of storytelling, offering a mesmerising journey through the highs and lows of love, art, resilience, and the human spirit.