Category: Song

Weltschmerz and glitter

Now in her sixties and not afraid to take hold of the world with both hands, Elzabe Zietsman’s revue comprises a mêlée of songs which she has penned and others she has moulded to fit South Africa’s unique levels of hypocrisy, hatred and hope, sometimes all in the same breath.

Let yourself go!

IT’S VERY RARE in this industry, in this country, that audiences are privileged to see skills so sharp and lithe, so wise and developed, in a performer who is so young. Daniel Anderson, at just 24, embraces performance with a full heart and an open soul, but much […]

Follow this rainbow!

IN OUR WORLD of cynicism and hate, of virulent social media and rapidly shifting technology, you may find it hard to believe that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s great 1959 musical The Sound of Music is a total runaway success on a stage in Johannesburg in 2024. Well, you’d be […]

Victory in red heels

HOW MANY BEAUTIFUL dreams have you left by the wayside as life has taken over and pushed you in directions that made you weep? How many times have you stood back and said: ‘I don’t want to be part of someone else’s project’? Bruce Dennill and Talia Kodesh […]

Garbed to a T

WHAT ARE YOU wearing right now? Does it pinch and bunch, ride and give you a pain where it shouldn’t? Does it make you feel like a million dollars, nevertheless? Or does it feel delicious but whatever you do, don’t catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror, […]

Figure 8s and the passage of love

AGAINST THE BACKDROP of many ‘alwayses’ and lots of ‘forevers’ every relationship goes through a sequence of uncertainties and bumps in the road. Jason Robert Brown’s intimate musical The Last Five Years takes a relatively ordinary story and gives it shards of brilliance with turnabouts in the sequence […]

Remarkably Eva

WITH A TOUCH of Janis Joplin, a bow to Ella Fitzgerald and a nod to Satchmo, a notorious stubbornness and an in-born sense of what art is really and how it digresses from the business of money, Eva Cassidy was a once-off. Kerry Hiles gives her story immortality […]

Rain on my heartache

SONG REVIEW: WASHED AWAY. A TALE OF frustration and confusion, to say nothing of gender bewilderment in a desperate quest for love, young South African performer Yahto Kraft’s second single, Washed Away, released on 1 August 2020 brings together lyrical story telling that is a perfect vehicle for […]