Category: Robyn Sassen

Mr Chips and the myth of the never-ending story

WHAT DO YOU do if, by the time you’re in your late 20s, your dream career bottoms out and you’re caught in a whirlwind of ennui and the need to redefine yourself? Why, you’ll probably tootle off to your mum for sympathy, sanction and maybe direction. That’s roughly […]

Praise song to my mother’s skirts

THERE IS ALWAYS something completely seductive about the appearance of a queue of people. One after the other, each with their idiosyncrasies: it’s an understanding of humanity that honours their uniqueness but empathises with their common plight. And the logic and structure of a line of people is […]

Chetty Chetty, Bang Bang

CHILDREN ARE FASCINATING entities on stage or screen. Rogue in their sense of instinct, they can be either fundamentally defining for a work, or they can simply reduce it to a morass of precocity, doing damage to the artistic product and probably to their own self-esteem, by blowing […]

How to go out with a bang

DON’T BE PUT off by the title of the new Diane Keaton film, Poms, and the bubble gum shallow American yarn it implies. Yes, all that glittery bubble gum stuff is there, enfolded in the story’s mix, but that’s probably not the main reason why you will love […]