A Good House
Bristol Old Vic

AMY JEPTHA’s sharply observed satire on a gated community delves below the aspirational families’ concerns that hunker down there to explore the scars of racism and the state of post-apartheid South Africa. 

In the ghost-like community of Stillwater it takes a mysterious shack appearing on a patch of wasteland to galvanise more than cursory interaction between the residents. Despite never seeing the inhabitants, its presence threatens their security from the physical to the financial, exposing the fears running beneath the surface of the growing class of the newly affluent. 

The innate racism born of history is evident when the only black couple, Sihle and Bonolo, are chosen by the community’s newly created neighbourhood watch to be the sole signatories on an eviction notice for the shack dwellers. The unspoken fear that the invisible inhabitants are black cracks open hidden tensions.

Sifiso Mazibuko and Mimi Khayisa are excellent as the sophisticated black couple hiding from their pasts: he from a socially awkward, impoverished Zulu-speaking upbringing, and she from a bougie background that does not fit with her self-made image. Newly promoted, Sihle turns an accepting smile on the world, while Bonolo is set on probing below the surface. 

Two contrasting scenes with their neighbours, frozen in social mode, allow the couple to  ridicule hilariously the suppressed racism of their visitors and later to reveal their distress at a growing awareness of their own role in this privileged and isolated world.

The other two couples provide the cornerstones of the enclosed community. Olivia Darnley as Lynette, the effusive real estate agent for the locality, socially engineering her new neighbours, and Christopher — her partner, played by Scott Sparrow — effusively protective of the community, hide behind a manic barrage of small talk.

Robin Rainsford’s yoga teaching, mindfulness-focused Jess and Kai Brummer’s up-tight, up-market sandwich maker are the new couple on the block whose financial insecurities dominate their outlook and act as the touchpaper for concerns about the new dwelling.

Nancy Medina’s tight direction allows all three couple to sparkle as their value laden lifestyles are challenged by the perceived threat of the tastefully designed shack, that takes on a metaphoric significance.

Jephta’s state-of-the-nation play is mostly light of touch and insightful, and full of humorous observations as a new class of South Africans are put under the microscope.

Runs until March 8. Box office: 0117 987 7877, bristololdvic.org.uk