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Tag: June van Merch

Eid and some blessings with a hefty helping of spice

LOVE THAT DEFIES the sometimes dogmatic grip of convention is taken under the rich loupe of the judginess of adult children, a community’s collective sweet tooth for juicy gossip, and a writer’s ability to navigate tradition with levity. This is what you can expect in Barakat, Amy Jephta’s […]

The size of truth

MURDER MOST FOUL is a very well trodden field in storytelling. But under Adelle van Wyk’s pen, with Makkie Onthou, the story is a lot richer with heart, the texture of society and love, than most whodunnits. You can hear this beautiful work tonight, 29 April on Radio […]

Song to Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

RADIO DRAMA REVIEW: AS ‘N KIND KOM KUIER. FILTERED THROUGH WITH botanical references and the best of African jazz, the trajectory of Zelda Bezuidenhout’s Afrikaans-language radio drama As ‘n Kind Kom Kuier, which debuts this evening on Radio Sonder Grense, is one that sings to the wisdom of […]

Love and the edge of doom

REVIEW: AFRIKAANS RADIO DRAMA: GENADE. WHAT DOES IT mean to tell someone you love them? Is it a silly, easy cliché; does it mean you promise to love them, come what may, and do whatever you can to preserve that love, that life? Or does it mean you […]

Whodunnit with a Karoo twist

IF YOU GET a special thrill out of the character definitions and wiles of an Agatha Christie murder, you will absolutely love every trick and nuance in Anton Treurnich’s Afrikaans-language radio play this week. Stille Waters is a tale crafted out of the idiosyncrasies of small town personalities. […]

If you please, paint me a flower

HORROR STORIES OF  interfering in-laws, told with earnestness and wit are so well trodden that they’ve become a cliché all of their own and there are a range of memes on the internet which describe them, both with humour and bitterness. Indeed, it’s seldom that a young couple […]

Lessons in death

WHEN A GREAT story is told, it gathers together diverse energies, glues you to its ebbs and flows and allows you to walk away with its resonances ringing and rumbling in your heart and belly. Sometimes all it takes is a 90 minute foray into a rural landscape, […]

How to say it for always

THE DEVASTATION AND psychological whirlwind that comes of sudden loss can rip up the threads of one’s established identity and turn everything completely upside-down. Irrevocably. This is the focus in the tender and raw story, Vlerke vir Jason (Wings for Jason) that is this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama […]

My mother’s dignity, my society’s shame

A BEAUTIFULLY CRAFTED tale of loyalty and values learned and imbibed, Dalene Matthee’s novel Die Judasbok (The Scapegoat) translates with a true sense of Klein Karoo grit into an Afrikaans-language radio drama you won’t forget in a hurry. It’s an extremely sensitive and intelligent radio-adaptation that will haunt […]