TAKE AN HISTORICAL site of worship that shrieks 1980s community in South Africa. Rattle its proverbial bones with the shadows and demons of what was profoundly taboo to that sense of community, then. Toss in some harsh lights, a dash of stage smoke and doef-doef music to make […]
GLOWING, YET UNDERSTATED magic comes of a particular kind of candid, descriptive writing that doesn’t stoop to sensationalism or bald self-promotion. You can find this in George Orwell’s domestic diaries, but you can also find it in Adam Riley’s Birds of South Africa. This current publication offers an […]
THE ABILITY TO cast a beautiful yarn in plain language is a very special skill. It’s about cutting the fat that words can spew if they’re not restrained, as it is about the luxury of being able to form characters with your pen and insights, impeccably. Like writers […]
PETITE YET FEISTY, full of passion and dance knowledge, Maxine Denys held the flame for classical ballet with an innate sense of dynamite. But more than just dance technique, she was a woman of wit and charisma, who not only gave Sleeping Beauty’s Carabosse the verve she requires, […]
SHE’S LOOKING AT you peripherally, her face fierce and focused in profile, a pencil in her hand. She’s a woman who has waited her turn in a schoolroom in Kampala, Uganda. For generations. But she’s more than just a reflection of education and abandonment, of culture and sexism. […]
PLACE THEATRE DIRECTOR Yaël Farber and Shakepeare’s Macbeth on the same page and you may, in your mind’s eye and heart, picture a bloodbath of gargantuan and subtle proportions, replete with screams of agony and wails of horror. You won’t be completely wrong. Indeed, in Farber’s direction of […]
PREPARE TO BE swept away by the political ambitions of a humble orange-dungareed young man with a man ban, a blanket stick and a cheeky yellow Tom Cat, in the National Theatre’s pantomime Dick Whittington, which you can see, for the next couple of days, for free online. […]
FILM REVIEW: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. CAN YOU HAVE too much midsummer madness at the same time? It’s an odd decision for arguably two of the biggest of London’s theatres to be live streaming the same play at virtually the same time. Truth be told, if you watch […]
FILM REVIEW: SMALL ISLAND. A TALE OF hate, love and the indignity of war, Small Island is one of those massive narratives that should enjoy the kind of classic currency of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. With the fabulous Leah Harvey as Hortense, the intense eye to […]
FILM REVIEW: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM AT THE GLOBE THEATRE. A miasmic tale of darkness and tomfoolery, which ramps amateurism up to the skies and has a denouement that sees everyone in the arms of their rightful lover, Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is notorious for its complexity, double- […]
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