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Humble pig, terrific rat, painted spider

REAL FRIENDSHIP DOESN’T always come in just any neat package, mostly. And the message of this lovely children’s musical, with honky tonk vibes and a cuddly spider who has painted nails will warm the cockles of your heart – and that of your child. Daniel Geddes does a […]

Mamma Mia! For Heaven’s Sake!

IF YOU’VE WITHSTOOD the hype around the Mamma Mia musical, because you’ve instinctively recognised it for the candy floss, shameless money generating initiative that it is, don’t relent now. Mamma Mia! Here we go again, is a further foray into a schlock-redolent yarn rich with platitudes and clustered […]

For all the potential Ellens

IT TAKES A very special level of respect for a story to be able to tell it with the dignity and complexity it warrants and not teeter off into preachiness or sensationalism. Ellen Pakkies is a real woman who was raised in the Cape Flats context of unrelenting […]

To the person who made me into a god

ANY MANIFESTATION OF the arts in the public domain involves collaborative energy, give and take, the use of others’ expertise. And the names of those people are mostly not on the headlines of the work. Ask any sub-editor, stage manager, gallery factotum or set designer. Björn Runge’s film […]

Take me to this river

DON’T BE MISLED into thinking that the relative size of sociologist Jacklyn Cock’s latest book is indicative of its value. Clocking in at less than 200 pages, this supremely lucid text is immense and it will take you the length and depth and width of the Kowie River […]

Mary’s monster issues

WHEN THE FIRST thing you do after watching a period drama is to scour the bookshelves to find a particular volume and then secrete yourself between its pages, to gorge yourself on the story and the writing, you know the filmmakers have done something right. This is precisely […]