Van Graan’s wit ranges from political one-liners that make you hear the proverbial “Ba Dum Tss” at the punch line in your mind’s ear, to brilliant sketches that reverberate with smart puns and rude twists of linguistic fate, not to mention the tweaking of popular songs into oft political weapons.
TAKE A PERFECTLY insane tale of paternal love and marital abhorrence, the filthiest vagaries of colonialist practice, the prospect of freedom and untold wealth. Toss them in the air with a gun, a visual sensibility to weep for and an understanding of sound that is at once contemporary […]
WHILE XENOPHOBIA MAY be one of the central discourses to the world we currently occupy, it is always coupled with the horror of being a stranger, trying to make good, in a strange land. Erik Poppe’s version of The Emigrants, a film which first saw light of day […]
WHICHEVER WAY YOU look at it, the little sliver of land at the heart of the Middle East is a hot potato. Enough to get otherwise intelligent and rational people spouting vicious invectives at strangers who have different opinions about it. Or its right to exist. That’s Israel […]
IT IS NOT every day that a story has the potency to leap off the page and into the rhythms of your heartbeat, regardless of how it has been written or presented. Estelle Neethling has experience as a writer of profiles, not books. But when Adolphine Misekabu crossed […]
A FRISSON OF sacredness mixed with a patent sense of physical uncertainty accompanies you as you enter the hallowed space which contains the result of three years of fine art research by Leora Farber. Her installation, Intimate Presences, Affective Absences (or, the snake within) is on show in […]
HE COMES INTO the 60th birthday party of his sister Solange, like a violent bull in a proverbial China shop, armed with a gift everyone knows he could not afford. The guests fear and hate him. He has an aggressive almost non-verbal approach which prickles your empathy. This […]
THEATRE REVIEW: BRETT BAILEY’S MACBETH. YOU MAY HAVE seen many productions of the Bard’s most violent tale of the catastrophe and tragedy of unbridled ambition, in your personal theatre-watching history. You may even feel a little blasé about the head counts and the blood spilled in this story. […]
VERY RARELY DO you get a coming together of narrative values that are not only sensitive to the text that they honour, but also have the maturity and sense of purpose to create a filmic product that stands on its own creative feet. This is what happens in […]
IF A PLAY finds you googling for information, or better still, scrabbling amongst your bookshelves after you’ve seen it, it must have done something right. Congo: The Trial of King Leopold II has a fabulous cast and premises rich with dangerous and interesting promise, that points in the […]
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