War and birth: A tale of a hole in the wall

IN THIS HYPER gender-aware world in which we live, the beast of war still forces slippages back into old stereotypes. With astounding simplicity and boldness, this is the premise of the Ukrainian film Klondike, which is directed, produced, written and edited by Maryna Er Gorbach. You can see […]

Mr Perfect, a cautionary tale

IF YOU WERE a god and had every possible human proclivity at your fingertips, on a drawing board, which ones would you choose to embody your most perfect partner? Beautiful eyes? An ability to laugh? A talent for the spontaneous? Large feet? This is roughly the premise of […]

Yes, he’s heavy; he’s my brother

CHILDHOOD IN THE presence of other people’s children can be terrifying, if you are seven. Think of children bigger, more gregarious than you. Children who have a different understanding of privacy, of play, of parameters, to you. Laura Wandel’s extraordinary work Playground offers a child’s perspective on the […]

No safe space for women

SPORT IS ONE of South Africa’s religions. It’s also been a cute metaphorical way of dealing with other concerns of a political ilk, in popular culture. Whistleblowers, created by the cast and directed by Rob Murray and Quintijn Relouw, takes things much deeper: it’s a scary, relevant and […]

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 […]