In Lucas Hnath’s ‘A Doll’s House Part 2’, there is empathy and fierceness in the give and take between social values. Zane Meas opposite Bianca Amato is splinteringly fine in his masculine vulnerability and sense of impotence with a softened edge of reconciliation for the damage that mansplaining can bring.
It is a long play, but such is the storytelling acumen and the passionate focus of Mthombeni, that as she begins, you completely lose yourself in its hairpin interstices. You become a molecule in a story which is at once horrifying and messy, tragic and cruel, yet beautiful and mythical.
With Craig Urbani and Graham Hopkins at the helm as Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering respectively and 23-year-old Leah Mari between them as Eliza Doolittle, the unrefined flower seller, under the direction of Steven Stead, Lerner and Loewe’s ‘My Fair Lady’ is a recipe made in musical theatre heaven.
THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT a man at the tail end of a long career, who holds tight to his dignity and even tighter to his broken dreams. It’s a quality as much about tragedy and heroism as it is about vulnerability, and in the central role of John Kani’s […]
IN A WORLD where theatre-making has been violently pared by budget, here is a hefty chunk of utter magic that cocks a snook at all of those restrictions. Don’t have more than one scene, they say. This one’s got many. Cut your cast down to monologue-status, they insist. […]
MULTI-TALENTED MASTER OF fiercely bright colours and the unequivocal backbone of the Durban arts community, Andrew Verster was known for his magnificent fine art and theatre design, as well as his contribution to the National Arts Festival. He wrote, mentored and allowed the audacity of art to run […]
TAKE A HANDFUL of western fairy tales. Inject into them a goodly measure of Jungian myth-making, and Rudolf Steiner thinking, spiced with some pop psychology, tight Broadway sequences, a dollop of cynicism, some good rhythmic writing and not a little tongue in cheek-ness and you get a rollicking […]
DWAYNE COMBRINCK IS a man with demons. You can see this as he walks into his workshop, a bloodied baseball bat in hand. You can see this in the anger he articulates and the acerbic vitriol he spews when provoked. But not all of his demons are fuelled […]
Drenched in blood and delicious in its unrelenting dark humour, Steven Stead’s production of Sweeney Todd, the Sondheim classic that blends some of the finest traditions in vocal music, is a real achievement. Headlined by Jonathan Roxmouth in the lead, and Charon Williams-Ros as the dreadfully fine Mrs […]
In this Hairspray-meets-Faustus 1960s-redolent musical, you get to experience the schlock-horror tradition from which musicals like The Rocky Horror Picture Show were spawned and blending some fabulous rock ‘n’ roll, doowop and Motown moves, Little Shop of Horrors is a hugely palatable production which engages with issues like […]
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