Victoria Almost Falls

Full-length comedy by Paul Slabolepszy. Play later known as My Low-Fat, Almost Italian Wedding.

The original text

The original draft of the play was written and performed in 1994. A re-worked version of the play, now titled My Low-Fat, Almost Italian Wedding was performed in 2013.

Subject

Set at the time of South Africa's first democratic elections. An Italian restaurant that was part of the romantic quasi-Mediterranean scene of old Hillbrow is dying in the new Johannesburg. The characters represent a cross-section of European immigrant South Africans who live in the rapidly changing Hillbrow and who fear that they will have no future in the new South Africa. The black head waiter believes that it is time for the restaurant to take Pasta Alfredo off the menu and to replace it with a dish of pap and chicken feet.

Publication

First published in Mooi Street and Other Moves by Witwatersrand University Press (1994), a collection of six plays written by Slabolepszy between 1984 and 1993: Under the Oaks (1984), Over the Hill (1985), Travelling Shots (1988), Smallholding (1989), The Return of Elvis Du Pisanie (1992) and Mooi Street Moves (1993).

Performance history in South Africa

1994 - Premièred at the Grahamstown Festival, directed by Lara Foot. The cast included James Borthwick, Patrick Ndlovu, Val Donald-Bell, Gilda Blacher, Jürgen Hellberg, Lionel Newton, Russel Savadier. Set and costumes designed by Catherine Henegan, lighting by Richard Barnes, stage manager Jacques de Kock.

2013 - In December, Artscape (in Cape Town) produced a rework of the play, now titled My Low-Fat, Almost Italian Wedding with Graham Hopkins, James Cairns.

Sources

National Arts Festival programme, 1994.

[Van Heerden (2008)][1]. p 153.

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