A fascinating second volume of memoirs from Pieter-Dirk Uys, the follow-up to Elections and erections, this time taking a critical (but still very entertaining) look at his career as playwright/actor/director. There's the fun, satire and name-dropping we would expect, but that's not really what this book is about: Uys is trying to set out on paper what he has learned from forty years on the stage, passing on useful information at a very down-to-earth level (the logistics of running a one-man show; how to market yourself on local radio; 1001 uses for beer-crates) but also getting involved in more abstract questions - the relationship between laughter and fear, which he spent quite some time on in the earlier book, gets another outing, and there is a lot of discussion of how you can make satirical comedy work effectively for different kinds of audiences. There's a lot of failure and frustration in between the successes, and Uys is clearly a perfectionist who wants his readers to know exactly why a show flopped, why a satirical squib missed its target, so that they will have more chance of getting it right. We get quite a few extended extracts from his plays, mostly with a detailed commentary: I should think this book would be an absolute goldmine for theatre students.
Something that he doesn't boast about, but which comes over very clearly in the writing is Uys's ability to create a character in a few words - just have a look at his sketches of the local kids in the opening and closing chapters of this book. It's a trick, of course, and it must be a skill you need to learn when you're writing for the theatre or for newspaper columns, but it still impresses me every time. Uys may not claim to be an Afrikaans Rudyard Kipling or P.G. Wodehouse, but he does share at least one thing with them! ( )