Fiona Ramsay in Blonde Poison. PICTURE: Fiona MacPherson
Fiona Ramsay returns to the Baxter Studio with her one-person show, Blonde Poison, written by Gail Louw, for a limited season from Tuesday June 11 to Saturday June 29, at 8pm with Saturday matinees at 3pm.
Blonde Poison reunites the creative expertise of Ramsay and multi-award-winning director, Fred Abrahamse, with set design by Marcel Meyer.
Set against the backdrop of the Holocaust, it is a morality tale about beauty, treachery and the high price of survival in a world beset with mistrust, espionage and duplicity.
“It encourages us to confront our own humanity, and the choices we make when threatened with certain deportation, possible displacement, vicious persecution and the horrors of war,” says Ramsay, who portrays Stella Goldschlag.
Goldschlag lived illegally in war-torn Berlin during World War II, where she was betrayed, beaten and tortured. When offered the chance of saving herself and her parents from the death camps, she became a “greifer” or “catcher” for the Gestapo, giving information and “ratting” on Jews in hiding. Stella’s character ranges from a tortured and pitiful victim to a callous cruel agent of death, from a beloved and loving daughter to a pitiless betrayer of friends and from a gentle and tender lover to a woman of depraved and decadent promiscuity.
Decades after the war, Stella agrees to an interview with a childhood friend - now a respected journalist - offering her a last chance at redemption.
Blonde Poison is the first play written by South African playwright Gail Louw who now lives in the UK.
Tickets cost from R145 to R220 through Webtickets or at Pick n Pay stores. For discounted block bookings contact Mark Dobson on email mark.dobson@uct.ac.za or call him on 021 680 3972