ANIMAL FARM. TWO words which conjure up a quirky engagement with political horror, as they refer to one of the more important tracts of contemporary literature. Peter Mammes, in his current exhibition, It’s Already Too Late Once the Soldiers Have Arrived, touches on the kind of wisdom and […]
IT IS NOT everyday that you find a truly South African story told with unabashed frankness in the eye of the horror of apartheid. It’s even rarer that you find one that is not only about the broad terrain of apartheid, but one which also burrows in a […]
RUPTURING AUDIENCES FOR over 130 years, the story of a privileged young woman and her magnetic attraction to a young man employed as her father’s driver, is back on the international boards, as relevant, bloody and direct as ever. Julie, penned by Polly Stenham, draws from the Strindberg […]
WHAT WOULD YOU do if you were given the opportunity to take your younger self by the hand and guide him through your most harsh disappointments and challenging detours that you know he will face? This is central to the beautifully flowing Afrikaans-language radio play Laat Herfs (Late […]
“IN MY NEXT project, I will be making a wildebeest out of 10 000 dried locusts that Wits University’s Zoo Museum curator has decommissioned and given me.” You wouldn’t expect a statement of that nature from anyone other than South African mosaic sculptor Hannelie Coetzee, whose work you can […]
AGEING IS A funny thing. Sure, it’s about vanity and keeping up appearances; it’s about reining in the metabolism and trying not to count the wrinkles, but it’s also about the clarity to say ‘no’ to things that you hate but would have been too polite to refuse […]
FROM THE VERY first spider web exquisitely filmed cast against the light, you understand some of the basic premises of this story. From the first moment you see Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), a young teenager living with her dad, Will (Ben Foster) in the great outdoors, you understand that […]
A SUBURBAN VERANDAH IN Johannesburg in the 1960s. The chairs are of a circular wire design, with criss-cross patterns on the seats, the table top, fashionable at the time. The space is harsh, defined by the Highveld light. The furniture stands without occupants. Waiting. The narrative that this […]
IT TAKES A very special writer to be able to strip the emotion of a funeral and infuse it with seriously funny dark humour that forces it to rise to a new level. This is what you will experience in Albert Short’s Ontydige Tydings (Untimely Tidings), an Afrikaans […]
WHEN SOMEONE LOOKS okay, you can’t always tell that they’re not. This is the central premise to Australian playwright David Williamson’s recent play Odd Man Out, currently on the boards in Johannesburg. It’s a work which is not only brilliantly conceived of and written, but it is one […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
Recent Comments