A Good House

Following the Royal Court’s huge 2024 success Giant, here’s another play that suggests that under new artistic director David Byrne, the theatre is becoming a good place to see really smart, really sharp political work.

This one is by South African writer Amy Jephta, and whirls brilliantly around a super simple idea: a smart new build cul-de-sac in a nice part of town in South Africa, where suddenly a shack pops up. Three couples who live on the road plot to get rid of the entity that’s dragging the value of their houses down, and Jephta whips up a lot of issues, mainly gentrification, race and class. But as directed by Nancy Medina it’s all done with such a huge sense of humour and a frenzied energy – not to mention the toe-curling awkwardness of some of the conversations – that it’s a constant joy to watch.

We start in the very tasteful home of the only Black couple in the neighbourhood. Mimi M Khayisa plays snob Bonolo, who has a vintage cheese knife and a wine aerator, while at the same time insisting she is the defender of poor Black communities. Her husband Sihle (Sifiso Mazibuko) has managed to escape a poor childhood to end up in a high-paying financial job.

They invite their next door neighbours, white couple Chris and Lynette, for drinks, and the conversation ripples with assumptions. ‘I’m in securities,’ Sihle says to Chris. ‘Which security company is that?’ says Chris. There’s a younger couple, too, Jess and Andrew, who have overstretched themselves to buy their house, and can’t afford to furnish it. While Sihle and Bonolo grapple with how their Blackness interacts with their class, Jess and Andrew feel like they don’t belong because of their age and their finances.  

Throughout the conversations, as the six of them work out what to do about the shack, Jephta digs down into the roots of what makes someone belong in a community. It’s all about the point where performance meets something more innate: how the clothes you wear, the art you have on the walls, the things you say at soirees determines what class you belong to, to some extent, but there are always other people to tell you you don’t belong.

The shack’s a symbol of that: Ultz’s design has it ever present in the background of the smart living room set, and even as it starts to change, it still doesn’t belong. Jephta’s suggestion is that no matter how long the shack has been there, and how much it turns itself into something that looks like all the other houses, it never will quite belong. Read into that any metaphor you want: yes it’s a single shack on a single street, but also it’s a symbol of whole neighbourhoods, whole cities, even whole countries, which demand assimilation while at the same time making it an impossible thing to ever achieve.

In the meantime, Jephta plants and uproots all those little shibboleths of middle classdom: what do we mean by ‘decent people’, ‘good neighbourhood’, etc? Stuffed full of amazing lines, and with six super performances, essentially: A Good House is a very good play.