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Tag: Auto & General Theatre on the Square

Nothing to be afraid of

LIKE IT OR not, death is the final prognosis of all of us, and veteran performer Simon Fortin takes this on with a full-hearted foray in his stage work … Or not to be, drawing on both Shakespeare’s litany and his own considerable experiences. Everything tender and sharp, […]

Only Gertrude. Only Alice.

OCCASIONALLY, IN THIS country and this industry, one is privy to a work that absolutely shines with all the values that good theatre promises to deliver. Amid all the political correctness, the paralysing self-censorship and other contemporary humourless ghoulies that beset our already beleaguered arts, there is this: […]

Unbearable weight of beauty and brains

CAN YOU IMAGINE the damaging complexity of being deemed “the most beautiful woman in the world”? This was one of the descriptions that dogged the complicated life of Austrian born American bombshell Hedy Lamarr, who most certainly was more than just a pretty face. Less acknowledged than her […]

How to break a cycle of terror

EVERYONE KNEW HER face. Everyone. When SABC anchor Tracy Going was brutally beaten by her boyfriend, it was knowledge instantly in the public domain. This was a story that rocked South Africa, not only for its grotesquely sensationalist value, but it opened up a whole hornet’s nest of […]

On Aïda and losing the plot

  A TALE OF politics and love, betrayal and death, Verdi’s opera Aïda, composed in 1870, is arguably one of the opera genre’s most known works. Indeed, it’s probably the repository for the most famous ensembles, tunes that you can whistle on your way to the theatre in […]

It is never only lipstick

THE WELSH VILLAGE of Aberfan in October of 1966 weathered a catastrophe worse than anyone could have imagined. At 09:15 in the morning of an otherwise ordinary but wet day, a colliery spoil tip slid down the mountain and drowned a primary school in a 12m-deep avalanche of […]

Take my hand, Daddy, I will lead

FROM THE VERY first spider web exquisitely filmed cast against the light, you understand some of the basic premises of this story. From the first moment you see Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), a young teenager living with her dad, Will (Ben Foster) in the great outdoors, you understand that […]