SAY THE WORD ‘Fiddler’ in the film context to virtually anyone you meet, and they will know exactly what you mean. Fiddler on the Roof is like Van Gogh’s ear or Beethoven’s Fifth, in a broader cultural sphere. It’s also up there as the pinnacle of shlock culture […]
STRIP THINGS DOWN to their bare basics. What do you really need to make a production that sings while it reaches boldly into the interstices of everyone’s heart? The Old and the Beautiful with Tony Bentel and Fiona Ramsay is a show that has seen many summers and […]
AGAINST THE BACKDROP of many ‘alwayses’ and lots of ‘forevers’ every relationship goes through a sequence of uncertainties and bumps in the road. Jason Robert Brown’s intimate musical The Last Five Years takes a relatively ordinary story and gives it shards of brilliance with turnabouts in the sequence […]
A SHOW WITH a gleaming singer in tight sparkly lamé and a fur boa, her memories of the hardships and joys of a life on stage, and an accompanist on piano, sticking to the world’s best standards is not a novel idea. Toss the inimitable Kate Normington into […]
PREPARE TO BE swept away by the political ambitions of a humble orange-dungareed young man with a man ban, a blanket stick and a cheeky yellow Tom Cat, in the National Theatre’s pantomime Dick Whittington, which you can see, for the next couple of days, for free online. […]
WHO CAN EVER pooh-pooh the pathos and tragedy of Tevye the dairyman? Living in a small shtetl in an Eastern European place called Anatevka, which is threatened by rising anti-Semitism, this character, penned by the inimitable Sholem Aleichem from 1894 is the profoundly religious father of five feisty […]
THERE’S SOMETHING RICHLY poignant about the glitz and perfume of a vibrant theatre industry that we once loved deeply and maybe took for granted. There’s something terrifying about a society in lockdown which allows its art freelancers to be tossed under the proverbial bus, many of them with […]
TRIBUTE TO MAUREEN DONNE BY HENRICO GREYLING. A HONEYED VOICE, overflowing generosity and someone who lit up the lives of others with her blissful spirit, Maureen Donne was an exceptionally talented jazz vocalist and tap dancer who not only conquered South African stage, but also showcased her masterful […]
A TALE OF lust and evil, worthiness and bias in the face of a racist society, teeming with some of the western world’s best known covers, Porgy and Bess seems to cock a snoot at everything that serious opera traditionally was about. Conceived and written by two Jewish […]
THE SIMPLE, TIMELESS lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel are the kinds of conjoined words and ideas that may have slipped so quietly into your sensibilities that you may not remember how well you know them, until you’re sitting in the audience of the revue of the Simon and […]
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