In Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s 2024 novel ‘Before we forget kindness’, the quality of line work in the descriptive passages is so achingly beautiful and so fascinatingly spare, it makes you feel like you are reading Japanese. The metaphors are simple, clear and rich. The sense of colour is memorable and strong.
In ‘n Begin, written by David Eldridge and translated by Nico Scheepers, the picture of life for both Laura and Daniel is not what either of them were raised to believe it would be. Happily ever after and never again alone are myths they acknowledge, now in their late-30s/early 40s.
‘Not Pop-Pop’ is about how grown-ups look away from some situations, but children won’t. Containing idioms like the idea of walking in someone else’s sneakers or how calling someone a bum is rude, the story doesn’t speak down to a small boy in the face of a great social issue.
With Craig Urbani and Graham Hopkins at the helm as Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering respectively and 23-year-old Leah Mari between them as Eliza Doolittle, the unrefined flower seller, under the direction of Steven Stead, Lerner and Loewe’s ‘My Fair Lady’ is a recipe made in musical theatre heaven.
In this book, Rory du Plessis enables you to look into the eyes of people who were subject to mental institutions in South Africa and to experience a sanctification of them as individuals. This beautiful protest touches on the slippery issue of anonymity and intimacy without hurting the people pictured.
When Cavaradossi (Freddie de Tommaso), having been tortured emerges full of love for Tosca, his aria ‘E lucevan de stelle’, a declaration of his undying belief in her, will melt you. You know this song even if you don’t. And what De Tommaso does with it, will may you cry.
In ‘Bush Brothers’, premised on de Witt’s experiences in the Angolan war, reflected on by war historians as South Africa’s ‘Vietnam’ in terms of the damage it wrought and its purposelessness, you get to understand the horror of violent sudden loss, the impact of friendship and terror of the unknown.
This play is about how broken ordinary things can have another life punctuated by different metaphors and idioms, because of their brokenness. It presents a set of values that also apply to broken people. It’s about the sensitive, beating nexus that makes a curious, maybe traumatised child into an artist.
‘Kite Flying at World’s End’ is a beautiful, lucid read, edited to be tight and brief in its splaying out of the whole universe rolled into a few weeks. It leaves you with your heart holding onto the things that matter and a respect for how things must turn out.
Van Graan’s wit ranges from political one-liners that make you hear the proverbial “Ba Dum Tss” at the punch line in your mind’s ear, to brilliant sketches that reverberate with smart puns and rude twists of linguistic fate, not to mention the tweaking of popular songs into oft political weapons.
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Chester Miggels
Gillian Rennie
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Geoff Sifrin
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Kapisha Ramraj
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Palesa Moore
Peta Kaplan
Robyn Sassen
Saleemah Shaik
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Willem Pieter
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