A freelance arts writer since 1998, I fell in love with the theatre as a toddler, proved rubbish as a ballerina: my starring role was as Mrs Pussy in Noddy as a seven-year-old, and earned my stripes as an academic in Fine Arts and Art History, in subsequent years. I write for a range of online and print publications, including the Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian and artslink.co.za and was formerly the arts editor of the SA Jewish Report, a weekly newspaper with which I was associated for 16 years. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.
IT WAS A show that posed cheeky questions at well-established values, blew smoke in the face of modesty and even cocked a snoot at narrative flow. And this was in 1973, when the Rocky Horror Show first saw light of day. This madcap tale of forbidden pleasures and […]
GREAT WISDOM AND subversive whimsy were central to the thinking, writing and art of Ingrid (Muffin) Stevens, who was fascinated by the meaning and histories of decoration. Deemed a matriarch of the South African art world in terms of the reach of her influence, the straight-talking toughness (but […]
The sickening cycle of bullying and abuse is central to Evil, an important and compelling work which takes the nub of what makes men try and break one another and dissects it. Not only a foray into the complexity of society and behaviour, the work is taken to […]
JUDY GARLAND. THE words themselves smack of red glittery stuff and evoke the sparkle and passion of the career of arguably American showbiz’s greatest, who began as a precocious toddler, sung some of the western world’s most beautiful recognisable standards and was wasted by the realities of her […]
ROUGH AND WISE words constructed around a complex and nuanced narrative and cast within the folds of metaphors and figures of speech, wickedly flipping languages up against one another, can never get old. Particularly if they are performed with a guttural perfection that is peppered with physical theatre […]
IF YOU ARE tired of all the spiteful whims, silly platitudes and bald one-upmanships that our social-media-inflamed world has become heir to, Fisherman’s Friends directed by Chris Foggin is a tonic with which to start the year. Featuring the inimitable David Hayman and the completely seductive landscape of […]
FILM DIRECTOR BONG Joon Ho is clearly the Quentin Tarantino of contemporary Korean film. His highly feted Parasite is a compelling piece of extremely violent film wrapped in the sweet-seeming but deeply sour saccharine of a tale within a tale within a tale. It leaves you quiveringly aware […]
Please note: This production uses strobes YOU AND YOUR child will be completely captivated by the infectious rhythms, madcap narrative and satisfying choreography in the current extremely slickly performed and directed production of Seussical, at the Lyric theatre, and it may be just the ticket for you – […]
THE DIFFICULT AND lonely place that an illness without obvious visible signs brings remains fraught, to this day, with speculation and gossip, taboos and embarrassment. In this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama on Radio Sonder Grense, Man op die Maan (man on the moon), written by Helena Mellet, which […]
ICE SHOWS IN Johannesburg are strange phenomena. They come with promises of wow, and a sense of the amazingly exotic. And for the first few minutes after the curtain rises, you’re glowingly aware that the stage is all frozen over and every movement on it is conducted with […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
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