Two characters sit beside each other, dressed in funeral attire. “Good morning!” says the man in the suit.

“Yes, I am mourning,” says the woman in the shawl.

It is this kind of absurd, dreamlike miscommunication that gives The Water Took my Breath Away its power. Written and directed by Calvin Ratladi and performed by Faniswa Yisa and Katlego Kaygee Letsholonyane, the play is an abstract two-hander that both prizes and puzzles out the singular effects of a staged dialogue.

The characters are close. They are a married couple, perhaps, or they are roommates. They are close in the literal sense, too. Each on a chair of their own, they sit beside one another for the duration of the performance, bodies pressed up against each other.

They talk in puzzles, each pursuing their own train of thought, while holding the other’s at the edge of their mind, never responding in a linear fashion. They repeat and rework words and their varying meanings. It is a kind of playful attention to wordplay that veers towards obscurity. All the while there is the noise of construction – an elusive antagonist that is always heard, but never quite located – that is the source of their ire.

Throughout their separate monologues, which masquerade as conversation, there is a constant return to claustrophobia, a relentless bombardment of the senses from the outside world. In the wake of a global pandemic and, more specifically, South Africa’s uniquely harsh lockdown regulations, it is a scene that is all too familiar. They are mourning, as it turns out, their breath.

If there is a plot to speak of, it is only hinted at, never fully realised. The lines in The Water Took my Breath Away are there to lure you into the illusion of narrative, guiding you deeper and deeper into repetition, dream, a world built up by linguistic oddities. “This is getting absurd,” says the suited man in one of many short, sharp moments in the play that pokes fun at its own form.

And how do we break this fever dream, this dreamlike state of incoherence? It ends where it began. “Good morning,” says the man in the suit. “Yes,” repeats the woman in the shawl as the lights fade, “I am mourning.”

– David Mann

CREDITS:

WRITER & DIRECTOR | Calvin Ratladi
PERFORMERS | Faniswa Yisa & Katlego KayGee Letsholonyane