Category: Theatre

Wish upon a star

ICE SHOWS IN Johannesburg are strange phenomena. They come with promises of wow, and a sense of the amazingly exotic. And for the first few minutes after the curtain rises, you’re glowingly aware that the stage is all frozen over and every movement on it is conducted with […]

All hail Jack the giant-killer

Please note: This production makes extensive use of strobe lights. FEE-FIE-FOE-FUM! YOU CAN smell the energy of a brand new pantomime, which reeks ‘event’ in glittery stuff and shiny things from the moment you enter the theatre. There are some very clear budget cuts in this year’s Joburg […]

Ghosts in the machine

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS ARE arguably the most complex and mysterious of objects invented. They can never just be objects. They can sing. They can laugh. They have identities and secret histories. They are beautiful and crafted and have a purpose which is about something a lot more intuitive and […]

Secret weapons

IF YOU WERE conscious in South Africa between the 1960s and 1990s, when the apartheid army held sway over South Africa’s male youth, the premises of Korporaal Lemmer en die Rowers, this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama on Radio Sonder Grense will bring swarms of goosebumps, blending army humiliation […]

Bright and fierce morals for tots

WHAT DO YOU do when you’re tasked with the staging of modern children’s classic that burst into popularity in 1964 and did not stint in saying things that were hilariously rude, flying in the face of all refined convention with some chewed chewing gum stuck behind its proverbial […]

Guys and dolls

OCCASIONALLY, YOU FIND a radio play which has the wisdom to splay open a socially controversial issue by engaging your intellectual muscle as well as all your funny bones. Doller as kopaf is a hilarious  and brilliant spot of social commentary, crisply focused and beautifully constructed around the […]

Cold turkey

WHAT WOULD YOU do if the internet got switched off tomorrow and all the little bits and scraps of your multiple engagements with different platforms of social media, the games you play and the relationships you’ve formed electronically suddenly vanished? Just like that. Writer Leon van Nierop takes […]