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 […]
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 […]
A THEATRE OPENING event in Johannesburg never felt complete before the arrival of Des and Dawn Lindberg, arguably one of South African theatre’s First Couples. When they entered the auditorium to take their places in a production’s audience, it felt as though a precious parental blessing had been […]
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 […]
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 […]
WHAT DOES IT take for a pretty love song to morph into a universal standard or an absolutely adored cover? Does it have to do with how frequently the audience may get to hear the tune? Or perhaps it has to do with its presence on the musicals […]
A TALE OF gentrification and blues where sex is the underlying parlance and song lifts the dialogue into a different realm, Dominique Morisseau’s Paradise Blue is an African American foray into the complexity of the future for a 1949 Detroit club owner. The production, directed by James Ngcobo […]
THE FACT OF death always belies what you may anticipate when you think of losing a loved one. One year after the untimely passing of David Brown, an extraordinary testament to the love of his family and his energy and focus, by way of an exhibition entitled Zoo […]
WHAT IS THE best way of celebrating a grand old dame of hospitality in this city? Should it out-lavish its already rather lavish self, and appeal only to the very wealthy, with exclusive shiny deals? Should it publish a glossy book about all the guests who have stayed […]
THEY TEETER INTO the theatre on high heels, with grotesque wigs askew and sparkly gloves, reeking of the kind of skanky, grubby ethos that defined 1980s Hillbrow or 1990s Troyeville in a very typically South African context. This is the cast of the first half of Heaven is […]
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