IT TAKES IMMENSE skill and maturity to know that the telling of a story filled with detail and drama, with interstices of horror and loss and replete with almost 60-year-old ghosts is done not with gimmicks and tricks, with big noise and flashing lights, but with an old […]
“DON’T COMPROMISE YOURSELF; you are all you got,” were the words that Zoleka Helesi wrote on social media as a hook to her strongest beliefs. A giant of South African theatre, who took roles by their heart and guts allowed them to grab at immortality, Helesi believed implicitly […]
TRIBUTE TO LYNETTE MARAIS BY GILLIAN RENNIE. LYNETTE MARAIS died from cancer on 28 August 2020. In other times, theatres across South Africa would have dimmed their lights. But we are in lockdown, in hiding from a lethal virus, and so it is up to our socially distanced […]
FILM REVIEW: MOTHER TO MOTHER. WHAT DO YOU say to the woman whose daughter your son has murdered? This is the nub of Sindisiwe Magona’s fictional tale, Mother to Mother, about the murder of Amy Biehl, a young American graduate who came to South Africa, an anti-apartheid activist. […]
Please note: This production makes extensive use of strobe lights. FEE-FIE-FOE-FUM! YOU CAN smell the energy of a brand new pantomime, which reeks ‘event’ in glittery stuff and shiny things from the moment you enter the theatre. There are some very clear budget cuts in this year’s Joburg […]
ARMED WITH RELENTLESS creative energy and passion, a hefty respect for the craft of performance and a crooked grin, Pieter Howes (formerly Pieter Bosch Botha), charmed the theatre industry and made audiences laugh until they wept for almost 30 years. He took his life on May 4, 2019. […]
HOLD ONTO YOUR hat and adjust your sunglasses! The end-of-year pantomime for 2018 is everything you need to see you firmly into the silly season. This rendition of Snow White, within the pantomime rubric is loud and bold, funny and clever, slick and quick, and rude, of course, […]
FORCING HILL-BILLY VALUES under the loupe and lasso of cowboy energy, Sam Shepard’s 1980s play, Fool for Love offers a raging and meaty reflection on broken love in a grubby world of lies, taboos and indiscretions. Director Janice Honeyman takes the project by its heart, and Kate Liquorish […]
THERE ARE SO many “wow” moments in the South African stage version of The Color Purple: The Musical, you’ve got to hold onto your seat with both hands. Supported by a set that features diagrammatic representation of space and texture, a cast that sparkles with magnificent voices and […]
INDEED, THE SILLY season is already upon us. But silly is as silly does and when the volume and strobes in an auditorium are ramped up to deafen and blind an audience in order to compensate for a messy hodge-podge of a story featuring political- and market-related humour […]
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