TAKE A HANDFUL of western fairy tales. Inject into them a goodly measure of Jungian myth-making, and Rudolf Steiner thinking, spiced with some pop psychology, tight Broadway sequences, a dollop of cynicism, some good rhythmic writing and not a little tongue in cheek-ness and you get a rollicking […]
WOULD YOU VOTE for a simple duck to be your national leader? This bizarre little question comes under the eyeglass in the National Children’s Theatre’s first production of the year. And it’s apt to get many a giggle and a squeal of delight. Duck for President, directed by […]
SHE WAS ONE of black America’s iconic figures during the turbulent 1960s. And her songs were grist for the protest mill. But that wasn’t all. You think Nina Simone (1933-2003) – born Eunice Waymon – and you think of the wealth of beauty and subtlety, nuance and fire […]
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 […]
YOU MAY THINK of them as the creepy crawlies that make you scream when you see them by chance, the six-legged insects that populate the underbelly of our world but Gillian Katz has given life and love to a bunch of ‘goggas’ with their hard carapaces, their noisy […]
HOLD ONTO YOUR hat and adjust your sunglasses! The end-of-year pantomime for 2018 is everything you need to see you firmly into the silly season. This rendition of Snow White, within the pantomime rubric is loud and bold, funny and clever, slick and quick, and rude, of course, […]
SHELVE YOUR CYNICISM! The People’s Theatre in Johannesburg presents a no-holds-barred Beauty and the Beast JR, which takes all the schlock and cliché necessary and mushes it together to form a fairy tale of the very finest stripe. Without any irrelevant pantomimish asides, without any lewd jokes for […]
BETHANY DICKSON AND Kenneth Meyer are the two best reasons you need to see Matilda: The Musical. This internationally feted production which pushes kids to their very limits boasts polish and cohesion, humour, cruelty, victory and madness, is bruised by sound design, in the Johannesburg venue. Matilda is […]
YOU KNOW THE shtick: an outsider wants to be part of the in group, but she’s rejected and hurt, laughed at and humiliated. She’s blatantly willing to do anything in her power to be loved, but fails. And then something happens and the world becomes a kinder place. […]
IF YOU’VE WITHSTOOD the hype around the Mamma Mia musical, because you’ve instinctively recognised it for the candy floss, shameless money generating initiative that it is, don’t relent now. Mamma Mia! Here we go again, is a further foray into a schlock-redolent yarn rich with platitudes and clustered […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
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