The production is delightful. It offers the now-57-year-old musical levity. As it opens, the lighting is rich with nuance. It feels like you’re gazing at a tableau of Rembrandt’s 1635 Belshazzar’s Feast not only for its colouration, but also in the evoked debauchery, teetering on the edge of biblical taboo.
In ‘Black Coffee’, everything, from a complete colour wheel of deadliest poison, to the toby jug in the room, to the sub-plot of secret plans for a bomb, not to forget the costumes and pin curls of the era, is perfectly handled. This is a well-made play at its best.
As loud, hard-edged stage musicals go, where the characters are dwarfed by massive technological sets, the lyrics are profoundly superficial and the lights set to penetrate your eyelids, Dear Evan Hansen presents technical competence. There are some beautiful moments of harmony between singers. Stuart Brown opposite Michael Stray collaborate compellingly.
‘Bitter Winter’ happens in a waiting room. It’s about apartheid and the shifting of the world from analogue to digital. It’s about how tightly one holds onto one’s embarrassing and life-forming secrets as it is about being in the same proverbial boat as another actor, regardless of age or experience.
In the hands of Daniel Butcher-Geddes, The Jungle Book’s all fun and games until the really scary beasts are part of the fray. And it’s here that you will see easily the finest snake puppet given life on stage in this country by Virtuous Kandemiri in the role of Kaa.
In this show, Thamm riffs on about the Guptas’ exposure and the all-seeing eyes of DA leader, Helen Zille. She talks a million miles a second of the insane outcomes of everything from Covid legislation to stolen billions of Rands and whistle-blowers, who have shaped (and saved) this country’s face.
When it comes to the marvellous Elzabe Zietsman performing ‘Routrip’, in pure, beautiful, unapologetic Afrikaans, in this city at last, you just have to switch off the social media, disregard your diary and simply go. It performs at 3pm at The Studio Theatre, Montecasino in Fourways on 20 October 2024.
THEATRE IS NO only alive and pumping in South Africa; it is world class. Take a gander at Ashley Dowds in one of this country’s contemporary classics, Paul Slabolepszy’s The Return of Elvis du Pisane, and you’re got the picture: gritty, funny, tragic, universal and something that will […]
WHEN YOU THINK of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer’s perfectly wonderful play of 1979 that cast mischievous light into the mysterious nooks and untold crannies of the life of 18th century Vienna composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the first thing that comes to mind is the music, that Confutatis from Mozart’s […]
WHEN YOU HAVE the chutzpah to vroom, as fast as your thighs can push onto a largish stage to a live audience, mounted on a Checkers bike made for a toddler, you know that you will have your audience’s attention from the get-go. This is Alan Committie in […]
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