Carlos Alberto Parreira. Bafana Bafana coach (well, not now that the FIFA World Cup® is done, but up until just the other day). He was the guy a nation pinned their hopes on – a guy we hoped against hope would pull our national team into some kind of form. To his credit, he did that, even if the boys missed out on a spot in the second round of the football spectacular currently taking over every inch of our daily lives. Before he came back to us – after leaving the team due to his wife’s illness – it was looking more than a little dismal and his replacement, Joel Santana, was up there with Julius on the list of people we love to hate. What is, however, still shrouded in relative secrecy, is what it was that convinced the award-winning coach to return to South African shores, offering at least a small sparkle of hope at a time when many thought all hope at even looking respectable on the field was long lost. That is until now.

In his new one-man show, Mpho Osei-Tutu (MacBeki) takes a light-hearted look at what possibly convinced Carlos to come back and coach Bafana ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup®. Convincing Carlos follows the exploits of one Sechaba Mofokeng – soccer fan extraordinaire. He’s the kind of guy who has a voicemail encouraging you to ‘leave a message after the vuvuzela’. When an encounter with a sizeable Nigerian after a rather disappointing performance by Bafana starts to haunt his dreams, Sechaba begins to suspect that the universe expects him to do something. If the Nigerian is correct and only Carlos Alberto Parreira can give the national team a shot at redemption, then he cannot, as a devout supporter, stand by and do nothing – especially when these dreams are backed up by other signs, like his young son’s first words being (yes you guessed it) ‘Carlos Alberto Parreira’. Will Sechaba be willing to do whatever it takes for his team? Even if that means driving his wife up the wall; getting stuck in jail after hassling Raymond Hack for Carlos’ phone number; or making deals with Nigerian druglords for tickets to Brazil, only to ultimately be stalked by a one of his henchmen, named Michael Jackson? Probably.

With Osei-Tutu playing everyone from the coloured guy who makes a living stealing cellphones who ends up in Sechaba’s police cell to Sechaba’s decidedly unimpressed wife, Linda and his still-in-nappies son, Jabulani, there is much space for him to demonstrate his considerable acting skill as he slides, seemingly effortlessly, from one into the other. Under the direction of Craig Morris, this is the show’s great strength.

There were a couple of characters I would have loved to see more of – most markedly, Sechaba’s wife, Linda who is hilarious in her indignance at how wronged she is – and others that could perhaps have featured less. The journalist who is trying to write a book about Sechaba’s story, and is used in the play as a framing device, was one of the least interesting and was perhaps used too much, making the story a little slow initially. That said, however, the long-term entertainment value of the show as a whole, made it worth the wait.

What surprised me was that ultimately, this play was less comic than I thought it would be, and more poignant than I expected. Not to say it isn’t funny – it absolutely is – but rather, there is something richer here. This play is about the extent to which we back our Bafana with a blind hope and optimism that is uniquely South African, and has been showing itself so beautifully in the past few weeks. It is about how that same passion is inextricably tied to every inch of our lives – reflected in how we love our families; how we treat each other; how we decorate our cars or blow our vuvuzelas; and how we continue to fill stadiums (even now that our national team is with us on the sidelines). It is a celebration of all this, tied together in a well-acted package with a good dose of laughter. We don’t just feel it because it is here now, we feel it because it always has been and always will be.

Convincing Carlos is on at the Old Mutual Theatre On The Square from 29 June until 10 July 2010.