7th May 2011

The Witness - 07 May 2011                                                        Click here for a PDF Version

FREDDIE Ferarri, in a glitzy smoking jacket and Tintin haircut, has just finished a brilliantly executed classical piano piece, taking the audience to audio ecstasy. As he exits the stage, the lights dim. The crowd waits in excited anticipation, some wriggling and straining in their chairs to get a better view of the stage. For most of them it’s their first time and they can’t wait to see her. Ferrari’s voice: “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present, Leyla Lam—bor —ghini!” Applause erupts as a blonde bombshell swans on to the stage, dressed to the nines with sculpted calves in high heels and vivid red nail polish. The fluttering of eyelashes directs the audience’s vision to alluring theatrical make-up. She is confidently elegant and has more attitude than the Karoo has klippies. As the music starts, she begins to sway and sashay as Eartha Kitt’s version of All By Myself begins, mouthed by her, a talented and enthusiastic female­ impersonator.

New York? London? Sydney or maybe even Joburg? Nope, it’s the Steytlerville Follies, on a Saturday­ night in the heart of the Klein Karoo at the Karroo Theatrical Hotel.

Since they bought the hotel in 2003, partners Mark Hinds and Jacque Rabie have transformed the previously dingy, run-down dump into a place of good food, warm hospitality and fine entertainment. Where there were previously moth-eaten stuffed animals oozing bad karma, there are now calming classic paintings. A wonderful energy pervades the beautifully decorated place. Perhaps proving that men can indeed multi-task, they run the entire establishment on their own, with Hinds doubling as accomplished pianist, barman, host, decorator and manager and Rabie as chef, gardener and performer — they both do a lot more, to boot.

The evening’s entertainment began with preprandial drinks watching a breathtaking sunset from the veranda over distant silhouetted Karoo mountains. Then a gong sounds and the audience is ushered into the imposing Grimaldi’s Theatre Hall, complete with long-stemmed candelabras, star-studded tablecloths and a mirror ball hanging above a raised stage. This is the realm of glitz, glamour and theatre­ fantasy. Watching over, from a lofty platform, is a display of showy female impersonators — male mannequins dressed to kill, over-the-top and outrageously gorgeous.

The crowd is fed a sumptuous three-course meal with Hinds and Rabie serving Rabie’s tasty fare. Then they toss the trays, don their alter egos and take to the stage. The cabaret begins. The two alternate acts, with Hinds playing piano as Rabie changes costumes. The audience, including gay couples and conservative-looking families, are all enthralled. The Afrikaans couple at a nearby table enthusiastically clap along to Hinds’s music and lean forward to get better pictures when the sexy Leyla flirts with the crowd, leaning forward to expose a cheeky bottom. They whoop with delight when she strips down to a skimpy white g-string, at the end of her own rendition of I Am What I A m. “This is me. I make no apologies for who I am,” she seems to say. No apology was necessary for this crowd — they can’t get enough of her.

Wigs, make-up and bling jewellery­ add to the glitz of the occasion. It is hard to believe that this glam girl was digging in the garden in a pair of scruffy shorts definitely as a man when I arrived at the hotel a few days before. “It’s a part you play. It’s not who you are,” says Rabie later, barefoot and back in shorts and a T-shirt, make-up removed. Only­ his immaculately painted red toenails hint at what he was up to earlier.

The idea to stage the female impersonator slot in the concerts began after they had a request. Rabie gave it a go and got it fabulously right. The show was an instant hit. Leyla is a sartorial delight whose over-the-top costumes are much anticipated each time she comes back on stage.

Hinds’s accomplishment at the black-and-white keys is hard-won after he was initially told he that should give up the instrument by teachers as a child.

“They said I wasn’t good enough.” But rebelling against their better judgment he went and bought difficult classical pieces and taught himself to play them, mastering the instrument. His show is intelligent, entertaining and very skilled.

So to get an idea of the Karoo Theatrical Hotel, think The Birdcage, mixed with Priscilla Queen of the Desert, but add in some wonderful classical music and two people who are warm and have the hospitality industry down to a fine art.

The couple make wonderful hosts, chatting and laughing easily­ with their guests as their cats and dogs wander in and out of their comfortable Karoo home. They are passionately pro-Steytlerville and enthuse about the area and its charms to guests, regaling them with hilarious, and often pleasingly irreverent, anecdotes of how they got the hotel off the ground.

A sense of the surreal lingers for days after the show. The entire­ hotel experience is so unexpectedly oasis-like in the middle­ of the arid Karoo and the cabaret so good, it leaves one replaying it in memory over and over.

A Karoo adventure second to none. I’m definitely going back for more. 

IN an interesting twist, Mark Hinds is the great grandson of the founder of The Natal Witness, David Dale Buchanan. He is well-versed in Buchanan’s story. It is perhaps fitting that he should feature in a newspaper started by his great grand-father.

THE Steytlerville Follies show was observed while the infamous Steytlerville shape-shifter, as reported by Sapa, was terrorising the local community. This reporter can confirm that while she made every effort to lure the monster, it appears that gender-bender Leyla Lamborghini intimidated the monster into staying away, as she changed shape far more successfully and attractively than he could ever hope to. Mark Hinds said the story has given the town great publicity. “We are thinking of introducing a Steytlerville Monster burger or Monster steak to the menu.”

He whispered that he had himself found odd horse-like footprints in the yard of the hotel, which he could not explain, and the discovery had freaked him out sufficiently to install infra-red motion-detector monitors.

Very oddly, hippo spoor had also been identified by an expert near the town. “My staff tell me that the monster was last seen sloping off towards Willowmore in the guise of a bear.”

Steytlerville is about two hours from Port Elizabeth and two-and-a-half hours from George. It is situated between the beautiful Baviaanskloof and Addo Elephant Park.

• The town is spotlessly clean.
• The streets are wide enough to turn an ox wagon.
• There is no discernible rush hour.