Category: Robyn Sassen

Hold onto the hope for that one beautiful day

That feeling when you get into a warm bath after a difficult day, and you know everything will be alright is the kind of sensation you get in the remote audience of Puccini’s timeless classic Madama Butterfly. It’s not just about music that you will recognise from countless […]

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 […]

Tricks and balances

GENTRIFICATION. IT’S AN issue you cannot be passive about, particularly if you have axes to grind and stakes you’ve planted in the decaying area under question. Brent Palmer’s play King George takes on the behemoth of city life in all its glory and shabbiness, and he wins. It’s […]