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.
By Suzanne Belling After fighting leukaemia for over 20 years, actress, TV producer/director, comedienne, children’s poet, drama coach, teacher and grandmother Helen Heldenmuth succumbed to the side-effects of treatment and the disease itself on August 5. She was 78. There were so many facets to her that one could […]
PICTURE ALL THE ingredients for a fabulously good yarn: a great historical feud, complicated theories to explain, the sexy philosophical potency of the electric chair, complex social conditions and the unsophisticated medical savvy of the 19th century. There’s even a spot of Morse Code jokes in the mix, […]
WARNING: THIS SHOW FEATURES THE USE OF STROBE LIGHTS IF YOU ARE complacent about feeding your youngsters a hefty uncritical dose of colonial platitudes, dished out by adult performers dressed in furry onesies, look no further. With lashings of strobes, pepperings of shrieks and frantic chases around the […]
MUSICAL BIOPICS ARE always complicated and oft dangerous affairs. They may be about not letting the facts get in the way of a good yarn, as they may find themselves compromised by a quest to find actors who look the part rather than have the skills or the […]
IT TAKES A special blend of creative fierceness, respect for the original and gentleness toward traditions established by a theatre over many years, to reinvent a great old chestnut with enormous success. The creative team behind this year’s iteration of Charlotte’s Web are not names previously associated with […]
SOMETIMES WHEN IT seems that the whole world is conspiring wickedly against you, you’re actually an arm’s reach away from a new chapter. And before you reach for the cross stitch to immortalise that legend, dispossess yourself of any silly platitudes as you tune in to the podcast […]
BY ALL ACCOUNTS, French actor Isabelle Huppert is magnificent. She has class and presence, she’s sexy and she’s not predictable. She’s beautiful in a way that evades Hollywood’s shallow glamour, but not even Huppert herself can save Greta, a film that may make you pause to consider if […]
IT’S EASY TO take a broom, a peg or an iron for granted in the daily conflagration of things that constitutes life itself. It’s about the daily grind of keeping dirt at bay as much as it is about presenting yourself in public, to say nothing of domesticity […]
YOU MAY NOT think your three- or four-year-old is ready yet for lessons about the value of money, history and literature, but in the extremely able hands of director Daniel Geddes, your sproglet will be moved, taught and fascinated by the wiles of a silly bunny who cannot […]
WHAT DO YOU do if, by the time you’re in your late 20s, your dream career bottoms out and you’re caught in a whirlwind of ennui and the need to redefine yourself? Why, you’ll probably tootle off to your mum for sympathy, sanction and maybe direction. That’s roughly […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
Recent Comments