In a country plagued by alcoholism and suicide, David Ireland’s ‘The Fifth Step’ directed by Charmaine Weir-Smith at the Baxter Studio Theatre in Cape Town, brings a richly potent conversation to the forefront without drowning you in stats or sadness. It is beautifully performed by Albert Pretorius and Lyle October.
While all the niceties are in place for gossipy titbits in the English village of King’s Abbot, where Roger Ackroyd lives, you will wish for more of Gertrude Ackroyd (Louise Saint Claire) with her over-the-top personality as she empties her whisky into a teacup and pretends, with fiery hair, nonchalance.
Directors Gerard Bester and Sibahle Mangena facilitate the cast of over 30 teenagers, aged between 13 and 19, to voice their opinions about complex social issues the work is tight, it has levity and it will seesaw you through every kind of emotion you have in you. Don’t wear mascara.
This film is the deep primeval howl of a teenaged person who gets herself embroiled in a vortex of bubbles of semi-digested milk, of high school responsibilities, of expenses beyond her vision and of moving into a flat with a boy she is not grown up enough yet to know.
Roland, a toilet paper king in the business world and an unfinished musician in his heart is stuck in the mountains. The weather’s uncooperative; his phone’s battery is depleted. With not even a jersey to offer him succour, he resigns himself to letting his thoughts take him where they must.
Hentie van der Merwe’s recent WAM exhibition ‘After De Jongh’ was replete with a selection of second-hand prints of Tinus De Jongh’s work, placed on patchworked fabric. This evokes the broekie lace doilies and crocheted antimacassars of a tradition of ‘tzatzkes’ used to enhance the home of many a granny.
Picture the scenario: A brand new high-end suburban complex with all the checks and balances that define privileged living. Everyone tiptoes around everyone else with a developed sense of conversational hygiene, carefully clicking every ‘c’, ‘x’ and ‘q’, with different parts of tongues not used to doing such things.
Anwar McKay’s beautiful book ‘The Invisible Boy from Bramble Way’ is about coming out queer in a religious Muslim world coloured by Calvinist values, apartheid relics and bias. It is about learning to call the world – the ‘rich’ parts of the world — home, because you can. Because you’ve earned it.
‘Black Burns Fast’ is told with skill sass and energy, with cheekiness and delicious bravado offering up the quandary of being gay and black in a hugely privileged all girls private school. Luthando’s mum is a single parent. Luthando’s not at this school lightly: it’s based on her academic smarts.
The high end musical Pretty Woman never pretends that the arrangement between Vivian and Edward is anything other than what it is. She’s a prostitute; he’s a rich guy. It is a deal, and both of them know it. But knowing something and feeling it are two different things.
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