For a black person in apartheid South Africa, your passbook was your life. Your name, your life history, where and how you could live – your whole identity was in that one hated document, that had to be produced on demand.

Sizwe Banzi’s passbook is not in order, and so his life is a mess. He cannot stay or work in the town where he lives and, if he is stopped in the street, he will be arrested and transported back to the wilderness of Ciskei.

The SJT’s current production uses the apartheid passbook to explore the wider question of identity. What happens to you if you change your identity; does it matter what name people call you by; what does it mean to be a man when your life is a sham? Banzi gets the chance literally to become a different person but what will this mean for him?

Louis Emerick plays Buntu, an older and wiser man who introduces Banzi, and the audience, to the realities of life in Port Elizabeth. Sean Shote as Banzi is an ingénue who rails against the frustrations of life, when all he wants to do is work to feed his family. The interplay between the two is beautifully handled, with the inhumanity of the system pointed up with wit and style and anger through the lives of the characters.

All this is preceded by a monologue by a third character, Styles, who runs a photo studio. A brilliant piece of acting by Emerick, but it doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the play, which really starts to motor once Sizwe and Buntu get together. Sizwe Banzi is a work of international scope and quality: see it while you can.
Roger Osborne

Sizwe Banzi is Dead runs at the SJT until 26 September. Details from www.sjt.uk.com