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Theatre icon Patrick Mynhardt dies
« on: 2007-10-25 17:35:22 » |
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[Blunderov] Sad news. I had the privilege of working with Patrick on a number of occasions and he was a wonderful man. A legend passes.
[url=http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=323037&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/]www.mg.co.za[/ur]
Theatre icon Patrick Mynhardt dies
Riaan Wolmarans and Sapa | Johannesburg, South Africa
25 October 2007 04:40
South African theatre icon Patrick Mynhardt, famous for his one-man show Boy from Bethulie and for portraying the Herman Charles Bosman character Oom Schalk Lourens on stage, has died at the age of 75, it was announced on Thursday.
Mynhardt passed away of natural causes in London on Thursday morning, Buz Publicity said in a statement. He was there to perform the biographical Boy from Bethulie at the Jermyn Street Theatre in the West End.
He was found dead by an old friend who had been putting him up in London.
"We are completely and utterly gutted. Absolutely horrified," said theatre general manager and trustee Penny Horner. "There was certainly nothing to indicate he was ill."
Mynhardt had performed three of his one-man shows of two hours each since the first week of his run opened on October 22.
Producer Colin Law, who was in London with Mynhardt, said: "This is a very sad end to a 30-year working relationship. It was a great privilege to work with Patrick. He died doing what he loved most -- performing."
Master storyteller
Daphne Kuhn, owner and producer of the Liberty Theatre on the Square in Johannesburg where Mynhardt often performed, said he will be remembered "with love and with laughter".
"He was a master storyteller," she said. "He captured the essence of South African life even during apartheid. His stories somehow captured the imaginations of everybody across the cultural divide. He will be sorely missed."
She added that Mynhardt -- "a gentleman to his fingertips" -- was loved and respected as a very fine, proud and passionate actor.
Stephen Gray, academic, author and literary critic, said: "Patrick Mynhardt will be remembered very positively. He was a brave man to do one one-man show and devote the rest of his life to it."
He added: "It was thanks to his initiative that he caused a total turnaround in our literature by rescuing Herman Charles Bosman from blackout and turning his reputation around to being the most noted South African writer in the 20th century."
Mynhardt's daughter-in-law, Marina Mynhardt, told the Mail & Guardian Online that he was a "raving raconteur". She could not confirm any funeral details as arrangements still had to be made to transport Mynhardt's body from the United Kingdom.
Life in entertainment
Born in Bethulie in the Free State on June 12 1932, Mynhardt was a star of the stage, film, television and radio for more than 50 years in South Africa and overseas. He appeared in more than 150 stage productions (in South Africa and the United Kingdom), 100 local and international films and about 100 television plays and serials, some local and some abroad.
On South African television he starred in the drama series Vyfster and the sitcom Suburban Bliss, though many South Africans knew him as the story-telling Oom Schalk Lourens in theatre shows such as A Sip of Jerepigo, More Jerepigo, Just Jerepigo, Cold Stone Jug and Another Sip of Jerepigo.
After studying at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, he joined the National Theatre Organisation in 1953 as an actor and started touring the country, according to his website, PatrickMynhardt.com. In 1954, he left for London where he trained at the Central School of Drama.
Performing on stage and for the BBC in Britain, he worked with such luminaries as Peter Sellers, Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine and Judi Dench. At the end of 1960 he returned to South Africa.
In a 2002 interview with SouthAfrica.info he said he had no plans to retire. "Retire? What would I do? I can do nothing but talk shit," he said.
He added: "I just wanted to be a wonderful actor. Forget about regrets. If you've achieved your great desire in life, what else matters?"
Mynhardt is survived by his son, Johann, two grandchildren, and his brother and his sister.
[Bl.] Patrick was probably most well known for his rendition of Herman Charles Bosman's Oom Schalk Lourens.
One last shot for old times.
Willem Prinsloo's Peach Brandy
(Oom Schalk Lourens said) you don't get flowers in the Groot Marico. It is not a bad district for mealies, and I once grew quite good onions in a small garden I made next to the dam. But what you can really call flowers are rare things here. Perhaps it's the heat. Or the drought.
Yet whenever I talk about flowers, I think of Willem Prinsloo's farm on Abjaterskop, where the dance was, and I think of Fritz Pretorius, sitting pale and sick by the roadside, and I think of the white rose that I wore in my hat, jauntily. But most of all I think of Grieta.
If you walk over my farm to the hoogte, and look towards the north-west, you can see Abjaterskop behind the ridge of the Dwarsberge. People will tell you that there are ghosts on Abjaterskop, and that it was once the home of witches. I can believe that. I was at Abjaterskop only once. That was many years ago. And I never went there again. Still, it wasn't the ghosts that kept me away; nor was it the witches.
Grieta Prinsloo was due to come back from the finishing school at Zeerust, where she had gone to learn English manners and dic¬tation and other high-class subjects. Therefore Willem Prinsloo, her father, arranged a big dance on his farm at Abjaterskop to celebrate Grieta's return.
I was invited to the party. So was Fritz Pretorius. So was every white person in the district, from Derdepoort to Ramoutsa. What was more, practically everybody went. Of course, we were all somewhat nervous about meeting Grieta. With all the superior things she had learnt at the finishing school, we wouldn't be able to talk to her in a chatty sort of way, just as though she were an ordinary Boer girl. But what fetched us all to Abjaterskop in the end was our knowledge that Willem Prinsloo made the best peach brandy in the district.
Fritz Pretorius spoke to me of the difficulty brought about by Grieta's learning.
"Yes, jong," he said, "I am feeling pretty shaky about talking to her, I can tell you. I have been rubbing up my education a bit, though. Yesterday I took out myoId slate that I last used when I left school seventeen years ago, and I did a few sums. I did some addition and subtraction. I tried a little multiplication, too. But I have forgotten how it is done."
I told Fritz that I would have liked to have helped him, but I had never learnt as far as multiplication.
The day of the dance arrived. The post-cart bearing Grieta to her father's house passed through Drogedal in the morning. In the afternoon I got dressed. I wore a black jacket, fawn trousers, and a pink shirt. I also put on the brown boots that I had bought about a year before, and that I had never had occasion to wear. For I would have looked silly walking about the farm in a pair of shop boots when everybody else wore homemade veldskoens.
I believed, as I got on my horse, and set off down the Government Road, with my hat rakishly on one side, that I would be easily the best-dressed young man at that dance.
It was getting on towards sunset when I arrived at the foot of Abjaterskop, which I had to skirt in order to reach Willem Prinsloo's farm, nestling in a hollow behind the hills. I felt, as I rode, that it was stupid for a man to live in a part that was reputed to be haunted. The trees grew taller and denser, as they always do on rising ground. And they also got a lot darker.
All over the place were queer, heavy shadows. I didn't like the look of them. I remembered stories I had heard of the witches of Abjaterskop, and what they did to travellers who lost their way in the dark. It seemed an easy thing to lose your way among those tall trees. Accordingly, I spurred my horse on to a gallop, to get out of this gloomy region as quickly as possible. After all, a horse is sensitive about things like ghosts and witches, and it was my duty to see my horse was not frightened unnecessarily. Especially as a cold wind suddenly sprang up through the poort, and once or twice it sounded as though an evil voice were calling my name. I started Yet to listen to my talking nobody would have guessed the wild, thrilling things that were in my heart.
I told Grieta about last year's drought, and about the difficulty of keeping the white ants from eating through the door and window-frames, and about the way my new brown boots tended to take the skin off my toe if I walked quickly.
Then I moved close up to her.
"Grieta," I said, taking her hand, "Grieta, there is something I want to tell you."
She pulled away her hand. She did it very gently, though.
Sorrowfully, almost.
"I know what you want to say," she answered. I was surprised at that.
"How do you know, Grieta?" I asked.
"Oh, I know lots of things," she replied, laughing again, "I haven't been to finishing school for nothing."
"I don't mean that," I answered at once, "I wasn't going to talk about spelling or arithmetic. I was going to tell you that -" "Please don't say it, Schalk," Grieta interrupted me. "I - I don't know whether I am worthy of hearing it. I don't know, even -" "But you are so lovely," I exclaimed. "I have got to tell you how lovely you are."
But at the very moment I stepped forward she retreated swiftly, eluding me. I couldn't understand how she had timed it so well. For, try as I might, I couldn't catch her. She sped lightly and gracefully amongst the trees, and I followed as best I could.
Yet it was not only my want of learning that handicapped me.
There were also my new boots. And Willem Prinsloo's peach brandy. And the shaft of a mule-cart - the lower end of the shaft, where it rests in the grass ..
I didn't fall very hard, though. The grass was long and thick there. But even as I fell a great happiness came into my heart. And I didn't care about anything else in the world.
Grieta had stopped running. She turned round. For an instant her body, slender and misty in the shadows, swayed towards me. Then her hand flew to her hair. Her finger pulled at the wreath. And the next thing I knew was that there lay, within reach of my hand, a small white rose. I shall always remember the thrill with which I picked up that rose, and how I trembled when I stuck it in my hat. I shall always remember the stir I caused when I walked into the kitchen. Everybody stopped drinking to look at the rose in my hat. The young men made jokes about it. The older men winked slyly and patted me on the back.
Although Fritz Pretorius was not in the kitchen to witness my triumph, I knew he would get to hear of it somehow. That would make him realise that it was impudence for a fellow like him to set up as Schalk Lourens's rival.
During the rest of the night I was a hero.
The men in the kitchen made me sit on the table. They plied me with brandy and drank to my health. And afterwards, when a dozen of them carried me outside, on to an ox-wagon, for fresh air, they fell with me only once.
At daybreak I was still on that wagon.
I woke up feeling very sick - until I remembered about Grieta's rose. There was that white rose still stuck in my hat, for the whole world to know that Grieta Prinsloo had chosen me before all other men.
But what I didn't want people to know was that I had remained asleep on that ox-wagon hours after the other guests had gone. So I rode away very quietly, glad that nobody was astir to see me go.
My head was dizzy as I rode, but in my heart it felt like green wings beating; and although it was day now, there was the same soft wind in the grass that had been there when Grieta flung the rose at me, standing under the stars.
I rode slowly through the trees on the slope of Abjaterskop, and had reached the place where the path turns south again, when I saw something that made me wonder if, at these fashionable finishing schools, they did not perhaps teach the girls too much.
First I saw Fritz Pretorius's horse by the roadside.
Then I saw Fritz. He was sitting up against a thorn-tree, with his chin resting on his knees. He looked very pale and sick. But what made me wonder much about those finishing schools was that in Fritz's hat, which had fallen on the ground some distance away from him, there was a small white rose.
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Blunderov
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Re:Theatre icon Patrick Mynhardt dies
« Reply #1 on: 2007-10-27 04:27:48 » |
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[Blunderov] Nog 'n dop?"
Mampoer *
Herman Charles Bosman
The berries of the kareeboom (Oom Schalk Lourens said, nodding his head in the direction of the tall tree whose shadows were creeping towards the edge of the stoep) may not make the best kind of mampoer that there is. What I mean is that karee brandy is not as potent as the brandy you distil from moepels or matoelas. Even peach brandy, they say, can make you forget the rust in the com quicker than the mampoer you make from karee-berries.
But karee mampoer is white and soft to look at, and the smoke that comes from it when you pull the cork out of the bottle is pale and rises up in slow curves. And in time of drought, when you have been standing at the borehole all day, pumping water for the cattle, so that by the evening water has got a bitter taste for you, then it is very soothing to sit on the front stoep, like now, and to get somebody to pull the cork out of a bottle of this kind of mampoer. Your hands will be sore and stiff from the pump-handle, so that if you try and pull it out yourself the cork will seem as deep down in the bottle as the water is in the borehole.
Many years ago, when I was a young man, and I sat here, on the front stoep, and I saw that white smoke floating away slowly and gracefully from the mouth of the bottle, and with a far-off fragrance, I used to think that the smoke looked like a young girl walking veiled under the stars. And now that I have grown old, and I look at that white smoke; I imagine that it is a young girl walking under the stars, and still veiled. I have never found out who she is.
Hans Kriel and I were in the same party that had gone from this section of the Groot Marico to Zeerust for the NagmaaL And it was a few evenings after our arrival, when we were on a visit to Kris Wilman's house on the outskirts of the town, that I learnt something of the first half of Hans Kriel's love story - that half at which I laughed. The knowledge of the second half came a little later, and I didn't laugh then.
We were sitting on Krisjan Wilman's stoep and looking out in the direction of Sephton's Nek. In the setting sun the koppies were red on one side; on the other side their shadows were lengthening rapidly over the vlakte. Krisjan Wilman had already poured out the mampoer, and the glasses were going round.
"That big shadow there is rushing through the thorn-trees just like a black elephant," Adriaan Bekker said. "In a few minutes' time it will be at Groot Marko station."
"The shorter the days are, the longer the shadows get," Frikkie Marais said. "I learnt that at school. There are also lucky and unlucky shadows."
"You are talking about ghosts, now, and not shadows," Adriaan Bekker interrupted him, learnedly. "Ghosts are all the same length, I think, more or less."
"No, it is the ghost stories that are all the same length," Krisjan Wilman said. "The kind you tell."
It was good mampoer, made from karee-berries that were plucked when they were still green and full of thick sap, just before they had begun to whiten, and we said things that contained much wisdom.
"It was like the shadow of a flower on her left cheek," I heard Hans Kriel say, and immediately I sat up to listen, for I could guess of what it was that he was talking.
"Is it on the lower part of her cheek?" I asked. "Two small purple marks?"
Because in that case I would know for sure that he was talking about the new waitress in the Zeerust cafe. I had seen her only once, through the plate-glass window, and because I had liked her looks I had gone up to the counter and asked her for a roll of Boer tobacco, which she said they did not stock. When she said they didn't stock koedoe biltong, either, I had felt too embarrassed to ask for anything else. Only afterwards I remembered that I could have gone in and sat down and ordered a cup of coffee and some harde beskuit. But it was too late then. By that time I felt that she could see that I came from this part of the Marico, even though I was wearing my hat well back on my head.
"Did you - did you speak to her?" I asked Hans Kriel after a while.
"Yes," he said, "I went in and asked her for a roll of Boer tobacco.
But she said they didn't sell tobacco by the roll, or koedoe biltong, either. She said this last with a sort of a sneer. I thought it was funny, seeing that I hadn't asked her for koedoe biltong. So I sat down in front of a little table and ordered some harde beskuit and a cup of coffee. She brought me a number of little dry, flat cakes with letters on them that I couldn't read very well. Her name is Marie Rossouw."
"You must have said quite a lot to her to have found out her name," I said, with something in my voice that must have made Hans Kriel suspicious.
"How do you know who I am talking about?" he demanded suddenly.
"Oh, never mind," I answered. "Let us ask Krisjan Wilman to refill our glasses."
I winked at the others and we all laughed, because by that time Hans Kriel was sitting half-sideways on the riempies bench, with his shoulders drawn up very high and his whole body seeming to be kept up by one elbow. It wasn't long after that he moved his elbow, so that we had to pick him up from the floor and carry him into the voorkamer, where we laid him in a comer on some leopard skins.
But before that he had spoken more about Marie Rossouw, the new waitress in the cafe. He said he had passed by and had seen her through the plate-glass window and there had been a vase of purple flowers on the counter, and he had noticed those two marks on her cheek, and those marks had looked very pretty to him, like two small shadows from those purple flowers.
"She is very beautiful," Hans Kriel said. "Her eyes have got deep things in them, like those dark pools behind Abjaterskop. And when she smiled at me once - by mistake, I think - I felt as though my heart was rushing over the vlaktes like that shadow we saw in the sunset."
"You must be careful of those dark pools behind Abjaterskop," I warned him. "We know those pools have got witches in them."
I felt it was a pity that we had to carry him inside, shortly afterwards. For the mampoer had begun to make Hans Kriel talk rather well.
As it happened, Hans Kriel was not the only one, that night, who encountered difficulties with the riempies bench. Several more of us were carried inside. And when I look back on that Nagmaal my most vivid memories are not of what the predikant said at the church service, or of Krisjan Wilman's mampoer, even, but of how very round the black spots were on the pale yellow of the leopard skin. They were so round that every time I looked at them they were turning.
In the morning Krisjan Wilman's wife woke us up and brought us coffee. Hans Kriel and I sat up side by side on the leopard skins, and in between drinking his coffee Hans Kriel said strange things. He was still talking about Marie Rossouw.
"Just after dark I got up from the front stoep and went to see her in the cafe," Hans Kriel said.
"You may have got up from the front stoep," I answered, "but you never got up from these leopard skins. Not from the moment we carried you here. That's the truth."
"I went to the cafe," Hans Kriel said, ignoring my interruption, "and it was very dark. She was there alone. I wanted to find out how she got those marks on her cheek. I think she is very pretty even without them. But with those marks Marie Rossouw is the most wild and beautiful thing in the whole world."
"I suppose her cheek got cut there when she was a child," I suggested. "Perhaps when a bottle of her father's mampoer exploded."
"No," Hans Kriel replied, very earnestly. "No. It was something else. I asked her where the marks came from. I asked her there, in the cafe, where we were alone together, and it suddenly seemed as though the whole place was washed with moonlight, and there was no counter between us anymore, and there was a strange laughter in her eyes when she brought her face very close to mine. And she said, 'I know you won't believe me. But that is where the devil kissed me. Satan kissed me there when we were behind Abjaterskop. Shall I show you?'
"That was what she said to me," Hans Kriel continued, "and I knew, then, that she was a witch. And that it was a very sinful thing to be in love with a witch. And so I caught her up in my arms, and I whispered, trembling all the time, 'Show me,' and our heads rose up very tall through the shadows. And everything moved very fast, faster than the shadows move from Abjaterskop in the setting of the sun. And I knew that we were behind Abjaterskop, and that her eyes were indeed the dark pools there, with the tall reeds growing on the edges.
And then I saw Satan come in between us. And he had hooves and a forked taiL And there were flames coming out of him. And he stooped down and kissed Marie Rossouw, on her cheek, where those marks were. And she laughed. And her eyes danced with merriment. And I found that it was all the time I who was kissing her. Now, what do you make of this, Schalk?"
I said, of course, that it was the mampoer. And that I knew, now, why I had been sleeping in such discomfort. It wasn't because the spots on the leopard skin were turning like round wheels; but because I had Satan sleeping next to me all night. And I said that this discovery wasn't new, either. I had always suspected something like that about him.
But I got an idea. And while the others were at breakfast I went out, on the pretext that I had to go and help Manie Burgers with his oxen at the church square outspan. But, instead, I went into the cafe, and because I knew her name was Marie Rossouw, when the waitress came for my order I could ask her whether she was related to the Rossouws of Rysmierbult, and I could tell her that I was distantly related to that family, also.
In the daylight there was about that cafe none of the queerness that Hans Kriel had spoken about. It was all very ordinary. Even those purple flowers were still on the counter. They looked slightly faded.
And then, suddenly, while we were talking, I asked her the thing that I was burning to know.
"That mark on your cheek, juffrou," I said, "will you tell me where you got it from?"
Marie Rossouw brought her face very close to mine, and her eyes were like dark pools with dancing lights in them.
"I know you won't believe me," she said, "but that is where Satan kissed me. When we were at the back of Abjaterskop together. Shall I show you?"
It was broad daylight. The morning lay yellow on the world and the sun shone in brightly through the plate-glass window, and there were quite a number of people in the street. And yet as I walked out of the cafe quickly, and along the pavement, I was shivering.
With one thing and another, I did not come across Hans Kriel again until three or four days later, when the Nagmaal was over and we were trekking to the other side of the Dwarsberge once more.
We spoke of a number of things, and then, trying to make my voice sound natural, I made mention of Marie Rossouw.
"That was a queer sort of dream you had," I said. "Yes," he answered, "it was queer."
"And did you find out," I asked, again trying to sound casual, "about those marks on her cheek?"
"Yes," Hans Kriel answered, "I asked Marie and she told me.
She said that when she was a child a bottle of mampoer burst in the voorkamer. Her cheek got cut by a splinter of glass. She is an unusual kind of girl, Marie Rossouw."
"Yes," I agreed, moving away. "Oh, yes."
But I also thought that there are things about mampoer that you can't understand very easily.
* http://www.encounter.co.za/article/179.html
Mampoer
The Americans call it 'moonshine', to the warm-blooded Irish it is 'Poteen' and the Swiss call it 'Kirsch'. In South Africa, it is 'Witblits' in the Cape and to Transvalers it is just 'Mampoer'. Mampoer and the variety of names given to it are the names of strong, homemade distilled brandy made from fruit.
Mampoer is uniquely South African. Its legend is so entangled in the South African folklore legends that it is difficult to distinguish between facts and fables.
What makes Mampoer so unique is the fact that it is distilled on the farm according to handpicked recipes and very special processes. The secrets of distilling this potent ‘brandy’ are carried over from generation to generation and this adds to the mystery that surrounds it.
It is not certain where the name ‘mampoer’ originated. Many stories and anecdotes which are being told and which are still in circulation as well as the closely guarded secret of the refined recipes, contribute to the fascination of the mampoer legend.
It is alleged that mampoer was named after Mampuru, a Pedi Chief who instigated the murder of his half-brother Sekoekoenie. It is alleged that, General Joubert's men probably obtained liquor from Mampuru and Mapog. It is believed that this liquor was distilled from Maroelas, which was plentiful in the area.
The test to determine quality of mampoer is very simple. Pour a small quantity on a flat surface and light it. If it all burns off with a clear blue flame, it is unadulterated and full strength. This is why Mampoer is sometimes also called 'fire water' - it causes the first-time drinker to catch his breath with his first sip.
A simple recipe for making mampoer: Take your drums of ripe yellow peaches (don't worry about any worms), mash them up and leave them for 14 days. The fruit ferments and gives off a lot of gas. When the bubbles subside, the mash is ready to distil. Don't leave the mash too long or it will go sour and you'll end up with peach vinegar.
Heat the mash in the still to just under boiling point. The alcohol boils off before the water and is trapped by a condensation pipe. The condensate is collected in a bucket and, for really top quality mampoer, it may be redistilled. The residue of the distillation process (known to whisky distillers as the feints) makes an excellent liniment and mosquito repellent.
The farmers in the Marico district (North West Province) where mampoer distilling is part of everyday life, have to sell their mampoer discreetly - mampoer distilling for retail sale is still illegal. This goes back to 1924 when the government passed a law giving KWV a monopoly on brandy production.
All stills had to be marked and registered with Customs and Excise, and detailed records kept as to the amount and strength of any liquor produced. Farmers were allowed to produce liquor only from fruit grown on their land. Portable stills were outlawed: they had to have a minimum capacity of 680 litres and had to be built on a cement or brick foundation.
Recently exemption was however given to agricultural museums and colleges to distil brandy, and two institutions have taken up the offer. In the Cape, the Kleinplasie farm museum in Worcester makes Witblits and in the Transvaal, the Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum, near Pretoria, distils mampoer.
A Mampoer tour from the town of Zeerust also takes tourists from farm to farm, where they can sample the home distilled, clear spirit or spend a night to enjoy the Groot Marico hospitality.
Mampoer has long ago become part of South Africa’s cultural heritage. To the people who distil and drink 'mampoer', it has become a way of life.
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