Category: Uncategorized

My falsies and other indignities

MALICIOUS GOSSIP, THE quest to squeeze your body into impossible Spanx and the need to slap sticky tape on your hairline in the name of fitting in, are just a couple of the indignities that women are brainwashed to comply with, in the world in which we live. […]

Give me fame, fortune and glory!

WHAT IS A teen flick? Dealing with issues and dreams too big to fit a framework suitable for pre-adolescents, it should contain the values that feel relevant to youth, but not flow too deep or wide to be irresponsible, and yet retain a relevance that’s neither prissy nor […]

How to teach a child to ride a bicycle

VICIOUSNESS IS OFT a convenient veil to wear in the face of extreme anguish. Playwright Simon Woods takes a rich and complex understanding of social values and their tipping points in his extraordinary play, Hansard. Coupled with incisive direction by Robert Whitehead and a give-and-take performance by Fiona […]

Lost and found: My baby girl

It was any woman’s absolute worst nightmare. And it was a story that rocked South Africa to its core. In April of 1997, Celeste Nurse gave birth to her first baby at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. A beautiful little girl. Amidst the blur of giving birth […]

Shimmy down memory lane with Kate

A SHOW WITH a gleaming singer in tight sparkly lamé and a fur boa, her memories of the hardships and joys of a life on stage, and an accompanist on piano, sticking to the world’s best standards is not a novel idea. Toss the inimitable Kate Normington into […]

Why I swim

LOSS. IT’S SOMETHING that has characterised so much of our emotional landscape over the past two and a half years, and yet it’s so enormous and universal and specific and intimate that none of us are able to fully cast ourselves around what it means. It’s stupendous. And […]

Do you believe in love after life?

THE CLASSIC THING that any self-respecting ordinary guy will do after witnessing something astonishing is to take it to his buddies in the bar, for a detailed post-mortem over a drink. This is exactly what happens in episode four of Martyn Le Roux’s serialised tale Die Soutwaterheks, (The […]