Word: shebeens
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...municipal bars, Zulu women have been brewing a crude moonshine of their own. A high-power popskull made of methylated spirits, carbide, potato peels or just about anything else that will ferment, this local version of skokiaan (called gavine) is often the only source of income for the "Shebeen Queens" who make it. Last week, when the Durban city council started transferring the people of Cato Manor to a new apartheid village farther away from town, the police moved in to smash the stills before the women could take them along...
...interloping "playboy" is not, as might be expected, a muscle-brained stud of the William Inge school, but a shy young man who is quite surprised to discover that by splitting open his father's head he has became a hero to everyone within miles of the Flaherty shebeen. "It's great luck and company I've won me in the end of time," he says, "--two fine women fighting for the likes of me--till I'm thinking this night wasn't I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone...
...musical Playboy, retitled The Heart's a Wonder, is pure Synge: the rollicking story of Christy Mahon, the peasant boy who became a hero by telling a tale of parricide. The scene is still Michael James Flaherty's peat-smoked shebeen (pub), and the rich poetic dialogue is still, as Synge said a good play must be, "as fully flavored as a nut or apple." For music the O'Farrell sisters borrowed Irish ballads. As for the lyrics, they did a remarkable job of bending Synge's own lifelike speech into rhyme...
Author Gordimer, a Johanne burger herself, tours this world of racial strangers with easy accuracy. When she describes a party, white or mixed, a hunting trip, or an illicit visit to a colored shebeen (speakeasy), there is always a byproduct of insights into what is meant by every word or act. When she has finished with Toby Hood, he is a changed man. Any reader who shares Toby's indifference may feel at least the beginnings of a similar change of heart...