Category: Theatre

Goodies and Baddies

SHE SAID, HE said and the vulnerable young woman servant without a voice hasn’t a chance in a context where she can be labelled one thing and hung for it. Push anyone far and ruthlessly enough with the threat of their worst fears at the price of their […]

Little house in the garden

TAKE THE GENRE of the South African farm novel, throw it in the air with all its idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies, violence and violation, broken promises and trashed dreams, and a great contemporary South African classic is born. Take the work on stage, and a different kind of magic […]

Narcissists and sucker punches

THE RUSH AND thrust of politics can date very easily. Particularly within the ambit of a staged play. In the hands of the makers of James Graham’s Best of Enemies, however, the political narrative surges with lifeblood that is timeless. The public conversation that is the focus of […]

You, me; your wife, my husband

WHAT, REALLY CONSTITUTES a life-long friendship? Is it the sharing of trauma? Is it found in people who you were schooled with as infants? Is it about the people you found yourself shoved up against in the army? For George (Alan Committie) and Doris (Sharon Spiegel-Wagner), it’s about […]

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 […]

Of family meetings and other lies

THERE IS NOTHING quite like the anger of an articulate playwright to get the currents of electricity flowing through the veins of an audience. My Fellow South Africans by Mike van Graan charges up the levels of political satire with strong potency and his best weapon of choice […]

Just a boy and his Bengal tiger

VERY OCCASIONALLY, THE world offers you an experience which is so utterly perfect in how it touches you, intellectually and spiritually, emotionally and with quirkiness, that it will change how you look at the world. This is what you can expect in the stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s […]

Wrinkles, come with mirth!

HOW DO YOU look back on close to six decades of incredulity at the caveats and bouquets of humour so off the wall that only politicians could have written them? Pieter-Dirk Uys’s latest theatre production, Sell-By Date, which performs at Montecasino until 10 September looks at a lifetime […]