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. I am currently a Research Associate at Wits University. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.
OCCASIONALLY, WHEN YOU ignore the hype and opt to see a film that has not been aggressively marketed or thrust in your face, you come across a true gem. Paul Dano’s Wildlife touches on the complexity of gender in an age of misogyny and broken dreams, with the […]
A YOUNG WOMAN survives what is tantamount to a rape to discover her father murdered by her attacker. This is the kind of horrendous storyline which you may well expect to be emblazoned in a current newspaper. But no, this is Mozart at his most mature, in Don […]
SHE SIZZLES WITH her sense of queenly potency, her sexual beauty and the essence of being Cleopatra and all that she represents to the past and the future. This is Sophie Okonedo who defies ordinary adjectives. Her performance is so fine, you cannot take your eyes or your […]
YOU’VE GOT TO hand it to Robert Redford. Now, at 82, this actor who was the ultimate in good looking dudes since the 1950s, is not only the star but also one of the producers of The Old Man and the Gun, an absolutely delicious foray into a […]
A TALE OF politics and love, betrayal and death, Verdi’s opera Aïda, composed in 1870, is arguably one of the opera genre’s most known works. Indeed, it’s probably the repository for the most famous ensembles, tunes that you can whistle on your way to the theatre in […]
THERE IS ALWAYS time for schmaltzy love stories, particularly when they are beautifully crafted and resonate with so many values that give you an understanding of what love is all about. Wessel Pretorius’s delicate RSG Afrikaans-language radio play Mike en Mavis ticks all these boxes, within a Casablanca […]
FILMS COME AND go. What is it that gives one life beyond a single viewing? When you watch Alfonso Cuarón’s astonishingly fine autobiographical film, Roma, for the first time, this thought may cross your mind. Twenty years down the line, you may still be holding on to some […]
WHAT WOULD YOU say to your only sibling if you knew you were dying? This week’s sensitively crafted Afrikaans-language radio play is a tale of sibling love, disappointment, and making good in the precious time one is allotted. Premised on the marriage idiom that every pot has a […]
DON’T FALL INTO the trap of taking the lull in theatre productions in Johannesburg at this time of year as an indication that there’s nothing worth seeing. Alan Bennett’s The Madness of George III filmed by the National Theatre Live, takes the prize for the finest bit of […]
IN THIS LIFETIME, you may be lucky enough to come across a dinkum sprite. A piece of quicksilver. A someone who doesn’t fit in anywhere, who makes their own rules and in doing so, changes the world’s parameters. And if you’re not lucky enough to meet that magical […]
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