King George’s property plight comes to Sandton
A witty play exploring conversations between two businessmen at odds with one another over a final eviction notice.
Where theatre mostly presents the opportunity to escape from reality, oftentimes realist productions such as King George challenge viewers to hone in and focus on specific issues.
The King George production – set in Woodstock, Cape Town – follows a backdoor negotiation between a property developer company’s CEO and the owner of a strip club.
It opened at Theatre on the Square in Sandton on April 24.
At the start of the play, Shane Wynter (the founder’s son and current CEO, portrayed by actor, Clyde Berning) is interrupted from a board meeting by strip club owner George Megalos (portrayed by the playwright, Brent Palmer) looking to negotiate a way for both parties to move forward with a mutual understanding.
The realism in this production outlines a dark, scary side to corporate conflict resolution processes. George – who seeks to position himself as a community martyr – resorts to blackmail, backing Shane into a corner.
One phone call made by Shane to a mysterious character lurking in the shadows, however, swings leveraging power in favour of one of the two businessmen on their journey in search of an outcome to their conflict. The stakes are so high that success for one means utter devastation for the other.
“What came across is the double standards on both sides,” said audience member Jeff Goldberg after the show. “Neither party was acting on the right side of the law. It was a mirror of some of what goes on out there in corporate, although not completely.”
Brent Palmer, who wrote the play, went on to express what led to him bringing this entertaining production to life through scripted pages.
“I had a very strong sense of the characters, and a strong sense of the conflict between these two men,” Palmer said. “, I had an increasing sense that there was something meaty and exciting and compelling there, within the script.”
On the play’s win-all-or-lose-everything ending, Palmer had this to say:
“The question is, who is speaking on the other end of the line? There’s another toxic character that we mention in the play, Marujan April, who George feels threatened by: it may very well be that character who Shane is in cahoots with,” Palmer concluded. “We wanted to leave the ending ambiguous; it feels lovely that audiences are responding to it.”
Directed by Adrian Collins, King George’s run in Sandton ends on May 4.
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