Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - October 16, 2005
Celean Jacobson

'I have got the excitement of a 13-year-old discovering that life is full of wonderful things and because I am 60 I don't have to ask permission to go and find those things'

PIETER-Dirk Uys wasn't telling us that it was his 60th birthday. It was left to his publishers, on September 28, to make a fuss with a large chocolate cake at the Johannesburg launch of his new book Between the Devil and the Deep.

In comparison, Evita Bezuidenhout's 70th birthday had been a major celebration in the Swartland the weekend before.

Accompanied by marching brass bands, the most famous white woman in South Africa (who doesn't exist) cut a ribbon marking the renaming of the R307 from Darling to Moorreesburg as the Evita Bezuidenhout Boulevard.

It highlighted a telling difference between the acclaimed actor, who is a deeply private person, and his much-loved creation, who laps up the limelight.

But in the end the glory is all Uys's. And he clapped and beamed like a six-year-old while the literary crowd sang Happy Birthday and the sparklers on the cake burnt bright.

It is hard not to be impressed by Uys's achievements - the nearly 10 books and more than 20 plays he has written, the 7000 performances he has given and the one million children he has reached with his Aids education programme.

But it is the indelible mark his work has made on South Africa that is so profound and of which Uys's new book is an eloquent reminder.

Billed as a "memoir of acting and reacting", it is the story of the chain reaction that has been Uys's life in the theatre or, as he puts it, "the theatre in my life".

It tracks the story of an Afrikaner boy whose classical pianist parents were among the National Party elite and who gradually grew into one of the country's great theatre impresarios.

Uys writes with wonderful longing about how the theatre wove its web around him, sucking him into a world of exacting wardrobe mistresses, stage lighting and the thrill of standing in the wings.

Urging him along were the sirens of the day - Marlene Dietrich, who he saw sweep the stage in Cape Town, and Sophia Loren, with whom he has had a close friendship for more than 40 years.

"Sophia Loren saved my life," Uys says, sitting by a Johannesburg hotel pool. He follows up with a typically lightning-fast quip: "I first had Hendrik Verwoerd on my wall as my hero; then I found pictures of Sophia and her legs were better."

His relationship with the Italian screen goddess began with a trip to Europe when he was 16. On a pilgrimage to Italy he found Loren's apartment and wrote her a note - and found a letter waiting for him when he returned to Cape Town.

Uys is still amazed "that this great star bothered to write back to some little poepgat from Cape Town".

After years of corresponding they met for the first time in Paris in 1976 and now speak almost every week.

"She invited me to her apartment. We had drinks, smoked cigarettes and played with her children. It was the most extraordinary experience," he says.

Since then Loren has seen Uys perform in Hollywood - "she came backstage and helped me zip up my Winnie Mandela frock" - and the actress has even given Evita a pair of her trademark sunglasses.

The book features a picture of Uys and Loren, and below it a photograph of Evita in the actress's glasses with former President Nelson Mandela.

"She has been an incredible inspiration to me on a daily basis. I learnt a lot from her," Uys says.

He is also learning the art of ageing gracefully from his young-at-heart muse.

"I have got the excitement of a 13-year-old discovering that life is full of wonderful things and because I am 60 I don't have to ask permission to go and find those things," he says.

Dressed in a baggy sweatshirt, covered in cat fur, he looks as if he has just got off the couch in the rehearsal room of his Evita se Perron theatre, which has put Darling on the map.

The sunlight is harsh, the mood businesslike, with no hint of it being a special day. But Uys is captivating. He draws you in, so you are unaware of anything but his ever-changing face, his ever-moving hands and the sting of his words.

Although he prefers to be called an "entertainer", it is the powerful satirical punch of his words that had the most impact.

Extracts in the book from some of his famous works such as Adapt or Dye, Cry Freemandela - The Movie and Foreign Aids show just how vicious Uys's bite can be, and how politicians and the "comedy of prejudice" have continued to give him a wealth of material.

There is a story in the book about how the old Publications Control Board tried to rule as obscene two words Uys had made up just to provoke it. "The reacting is more interesting for me than the acting," he says.

And there has been nothing quite like the phenomenal reaction to Evita Bezuidenhout. She gets cake and flowers for her birthday from Desmond and Leah Tutu and still counts Pik Botha as one of her greatest fans.

The book explains the early days of Evita as ambassador to Bapetikosweti and charts her development in the new South Africa.

But the book also reveals Uys's own relationship with his famous creation. It shows the success of Evita while he remained persona non grata.

However, Uys also shows irritation with her overpowering presence and worries about the act getting tired.

"It's a job. It's a character. I spend less than 1% of my time on Evita and everyone thinks I sleep in her clothes. But I don't mind because it means she works," he says.

It helped, he says, that "those ou manne [of the National Party] got a thrill out of it ... She was very much up their street".

But if there was one reason for the existence of Evita, Uys says, it was to make Mandela laugh.

"Because he loves her. He laughs from his gut and he holds his tummy and every time that happens this is the reason for Evita - that this extraordinary man has a chance to just have a laugh and not feel guilty that he is having a laugh at an old Afrikaans lady," he says.

But there is a sense in the book of Uys wanting to put some distance between him and Evita, of standing on his own.

The Aids education work that is Uys's main focus now is his "mission". It's the hardest work he has ever done.

"It was so not part of a theatrical punch line," he says.

There are other parts of the book that are more autobiographical - the discovery of his mother's Jewish roots, her suicide and his father's death - but there is a sense of Uys holding back. There is no mention of his love life, for example.

"It's not the place for it à I don't think I will ever write an autobiography. A memoir is a taste, a smell, a sense of something as opposed to the facts," he says.

There is another telling incident with Mandela in the book where Uys, in full Evita costume, asks if Mandela would like to see him with his wig off. He pulls it off only for Mandela to ask hurriedly for it to be put back on.

It's as if we have got so used to seeing Uys playing someone else that it is hard to see him as himself.

Later at the book launch, as he repeats old one-liners or reels off new ones like the "mock in democracy, the con in reconciliation", there is a sense that sometimes it is a case of Uys playing Uys.

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Sunday Times (Johannesburg)