There’s a Starman waiting in the sky … or is there?

SHE WAS ONE of the South African media’s darlings from the 1950s with her tales of aliens, UFOs and her own abduction and seduction, pregnancy and childbearing. It was a story too good to be true for news editors, journos and cynics alike and even if you were […]

No bread? Eat cake!

VERY OCCASIONALLY, YOU feel that sense of privilege in the presence of an artwork that brings tears and goosebumps. From the very first roll of the snare drum with the thunder of a jembe and a dun-dun behind it, Sibikwa’s 1789 will have you transfixed. It’s immersion theatre […]

Laugh: Things could be kakker

WITH HIS DISTINCTIVE white streak down the middle of his verdant Afro, his rubbery smile and his straight talk and complicated yarns, Marc Lottering is truly one of South Africa’s greatest treasures. His show, So I wrote that musical is performing at the Hilton Arts Festival in Pietermaritzburg, […]

Things to make Yia-Yia gasp

COSTA CARASTRAVRAKIS HAS everything. From a name that gets the tongues of non-Greeks in knots before they even try to say it, to a sexual identity that gets the gossipy tables of flashy Greek mommies waiting for school to be out fiercely aflutter, to a mother with legendary […]

Ladies who bounce back

THE VETERAN BRITISH actress Miriam Margolyes describes the idea of doing a one-woman show as “lonely and frightening”, in her autobiography, This Much is True. When you see Serena Steinhauer emerge on stage in a flurry of words and wrap herself in the identity of three iconic women […]

Clothes shopping for a 300-year-old

YOU KNOW SOMETHING enormous has happened when your body kicks in, and when after experiencing this thing, you wake up lying on the floor with someone giving you sips of sugar water. This is where we find Belinda (Annette Havenga) in the opening sequences of episode nine of […]

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, […]