The mind of a killer: Noma Dumezweni (Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela) and Matthew Marsh (Eugene de Kock). Photo credit: Jesse Kate Kramer
Play: A Human Being Died That Night
Theatre: Hampstead Theatre
Playwright: Nicholas Wright
Director: Jonathan Munby
Review by Natalie Gormally
What makes a man commit deplorable crimes against humanity based on a person’s race? And can a society ever recover after decades of state sanctioned violence? These are some of the questions A Human Being Died That Night, a true story play set in South Africa, tries to answer.
Jonathan Munby’s production starts in the basement foyer of Hampstead Theatre. We are introduced to Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (Noma Dumezweni), a psychologist and member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose real life story of forgiveness in post-apartheid South African begins to unfold.
Nicholas Wright’s script, brilliantly adapted from Gobodo-Madikizela’s book of the same name, details her interviews with the notorious Eugene de Kock (played with conviction by Matthew Marsh), a former commanding police officer of a counter insurgency unit that kidnapped, murdered and tortured numerous anti-apartheid activists. Dubbed ‘Prime Evil’ by the South African press, de Kock is serving two life sentences plus another 212 years in a Pretoria jail following the fall of the apartheid government in 1994.
The audience then moves into a darkened theatre space to face the towering steel bars of a prison cell where de Kock is chained and waiting. For 80 minutes we witness Gobodo-Madikizela probe the mind of this mass murderer – his personality, motivations and beliefs – in an attempt to understand what causes a person to commit such inhumane acts.
It is a difficult account to watch and hear. De Kock recalls some of his most heinous crimes, from running death squads and carrying out assassinations, to committing gross acts of torture, including the merciless “necklacing”, where a rubber tire, filled with petrol, is forced around a victim’s chest and arms and set on fire.
We also hear about de Kock as a stammering youngster and his pleas for forgiveness to the relatives of his many victims. He is also angry that he is being made a scapegoat by the state and press, while many of his former colleagues escape punishment. “I was simply a clog in a large machine”, and was “acting on orders”, he pleads to justify his horrific acts.
But is de Kock simply an opportunist, playing Gobodo-Madikizela to reduce his prison sentence? Or is he a man who see the consequences of his crimes, is ravaged by guilt and on a quest for absolution? It all feels rather self-serving until de Kock eventually breaks down as he recalls one night when he looked his victims in the eyes as they died.
Marsh gives a towering and rollercoaster of a performance as de Kock, leaving you captivated and unsettled by his merging of self-hate and self-interest. Gobodo-Madikizela, played by the ever excellent Dumezweni, is determined not to be too drawn in by him, expertly displaying both an uncompromising and empathetic position.
It is notable that de Kock opens up to a black female professor, something inconceivable under the old regime. Over time, the pair’s relationship moves from one of interrogation and revelation to a more honest intimacy.
While it is all too easy to simply see de Kock as a monster, understanding his motivations doesn’t excuse his actions. What Gobodo-Madikizela highlights is that the difference between good and evil “is only paper thin”.
Munby directs an intense and intimate production while Paul Willis’ set design takes you from a light and open conference hall to a dimly light prison space which both unnerves and enlightens.
A Human Being Died That Night is a powerful, heart stopping and thought-provoking piece, raising difficult and complex questions about forgiveness and reconciliation which applies well beyond South Africa.
A Human Being Died That Night is at Hampstead Theatre until 15 June 2014.