Too many wine farmers woo the chef

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a gorgeous stranger pops into your restaurant for a casual burger and a stated desire for more? Is he a critic? Has he an agenda? When Louis (André Weiderman) presents himself at the restaurant owned by Lilian (Roeline Daneel), you think love is in the […]

Chetty Chetty, Bang Bang

CHILDREN ARE FASCINATING entities on stage or screen. Rogue in their sense of instinct, they can be either fundamentally defining for a work, or they can simply reduce it to a morass of precocity, doing damage to the artistic product and probably to their own self-esteem, by blowing […]

How to go out with a bang

DON’T BE PUT off by the title of the new Diane Keaton film, Poms, and the bubble gum shallow American yarn it implies. Yes, all that glittery bubble gum stuff is there, enfolded in the story’s mix, but that’s probably not the main reason why you will love […]

Melanin deliberations and navel-gazing

HE’S EARNED HIS reputation – and several awards – as a fine art photographer, but Mikhael Subotzky has been smashing definitions throughout the trajectory of his career. This very large solo exhibition, entitled Massive Nerve Corpus at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg sees his thinking pointed in several […]

Two men in the kitchen

THE BEAUTIFUL UNLOGIC and earnest hyperbole of a nine-year-old in conversation with his elderly grandfather starts this deeply wrenching play about sudden loss and unspoken words. Retief Scholtz’s work Karel se Oupa, was staged a few years ago, at the Market Theatre; it’s been reworked for radio and […]

A girl and the Bomb

WHAT WOULD YOU do if you discovered that your elderly mum, in her hand-knitted cardigan with her arthritic fingers, has had a secret life that is of great concern to the authorities? A life that involved nuclear plans and spies, sex and political manipulation? You might try to […]