Boy from Bethulie: An autobiography by Patrick Mynhardt

Anna Neethling-Pohl once told Patrick Mynhardt: ‘Kind, jy moet al die kak wat jy praat neerskryf!’

Happily, Mynhardt has now obliged. Boy from Bethulie is a major theatrical autobiography which is both funny and breathtakingly honest. Part history of mainstream South African theatre from the 1950s onwards (featuring theatre legends like André Huguenet, Hermien Dommisse, Siegfried Mynhardt, Sandra Prinsloo and Wilma Snyman) and part social documentary of the communities Mynhardt has played to – sophisticated audiences in ostentatious national theatres; rural audiences in tiny, ill-equipped and draughty halls in desolate platteland towns and villages; business executives in bomas in the bush – the book focuses a spotlight on the people and places intricately linked with the actor’s life. Mynhardt is searingly honest, but the honesty is tempered with a self-deprecating humour that more often than not makes him the butt of his own jokes.

The story-telling skills that turned his childhood memories into the extraordinarily successful show Boy from Bethulie translate easily onto the page and cover all aspects of his life: from growing up in a family headed by an Afrikaans doctor father and Irish Catholic mother to his days in the vibrant world of London theatre and his phenomenal success in South Africa, which continues to this day. But most of all, the book reveals the many parts of the man who has come to be known as South Africa’s Laurence Olivier.