Category: Review

Desperadoes with magic on their side

What does it take for you to shelve your own values and leap in the path of a proverbial speeding truck for the sake of taking a shot at helping someone else? In episode 20 of Martyn le Roux’s serialised podcast, Die Soutwaterheks, our friends get to understand […]

Learned friends; true rotters

THE COURT DRAMA in the wake of a murder of passion is arguably the most enthralling context for a thrilling story to unfold. Put it in the hands of one of South Africa’s finest directors, know that it sparkles with the words of the queen of murder mysteries […]

Love, two beers and forever

IF YOU SLIGHTLY close your eyes through all the frippery and flappery of the first act of Puccini’s La Rondine, you might believe yourself to have been magically transported into an Aubrey Beardsley painting, with all its Art Deco glissandos and arches, gold leaf and quirky feathery headdresses. […]

To wish upon a King

THEATRE IS NO only alive and pumping in South Africa; it is world class. Take a gander at Ashley Dowds in one of this country’s contemporary classics, Paul Slabolepszy’s The Return of Elvis du Pisane, and you’re got the picture: gritty, funny, tragic, universal and something that will […]

Scars that map our future

JUST WHEN YOU think you’ve got your whole act together, you know something might jigger it all into disaster. It’s like when you manage to get to the post office to buy stamps, and lo and behold, there’s a madman there, shooting the life out of everyone. This […]

Kicks and pricks in the classroom

MUSICAL TALES THAT wag a finger or six at values which keep young blood closeted in ignorance have a danger of warming the cockles of the heart even before the curtain rises. Sylvaine Strike’s adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s establishment-rattling work Spring Awakening which was only first performed some […]

To that box of photos that got lost

IN HIS EXQUISITE 2008 tractate on death and dying, English writer Julian Barnes comments that just as every writer will have a last reader, so every grave will have a last visitor. South African artist Maria Pienaar takes this profound reflection a step further, contemplating the last viewer […]