In Mike van Graan’s ‘The Good White’, the pieces are all in place for an explosive denouement. Add a bit of protest performance, the demon of gender-based violence, and some shenanigans in the wrong bedroom, and you get the picture: It’s a scenario tense with energy and brittle with distrust.
Van Graan’s wit ranges from political one-liners that make you hear the proverbial “Ba Dum Tss” at the punch line in your mind’s ear, to brilliant sketches that reverberate with smart puns and rude twists of linguistic fate, not to mention the tweaking of popular songs into oft political weapons.
The narrative of ‘A Streetcar’ is rich with tropes central to the South African taxi industry, and its complex social and economic history. Listen to the discourse. Taxiology in South Africa is a real thing, about spicy micro-narratives and social protocol as well as about God, the universe and everything.
THERE IS NOTHING quite like the anger of an articulate playwright to get the currents of electricity flowing through the veins of an audience. My Fellow South Africans by Mike van Graan charges up the levels of political satire with strong potency and his best weapon of choice […]
FOUR LITTLE WORDS from one of the best showtune lyrics out there will turn into a delicious ear worm if you give them a chance: If you’ve watched a musical or two, He Had it Coming will get you jiving with the crimes of passion of the notorious […]
THEATRE REVIEW: RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS WITH A POTENT nod in the direction of the 1981 classic South African play, Woza Albert!, Mike van Graan’s Return of the Ancestors is a provocative essay on what has become of the world in which we exist. It offers a premise […]
IT WAS APARTHEID’S jester Pieter-Dirk Uys who some years ago famously cited the shenanigans of the state as being the best possible script writers for his work. He wasn’t alone. Playwright Mike van Graan doesn’t miss a beat in using every dirty nuance and crass irony dished out […]
“HAVE YOU SEEN Green Man Flashing?” was a statement uttered with urgency everywhere you went in 2004/5. It was a play that rocked South African society’s equilibrium when it first saw light of day. One of the first works from the pen of Mike van Graan, it fitted the […]
FOUR FIERCE BLACK women toss caution and values to the wind in this carefully crafted take on hypocrisy, the culture of mourning and too much sugar in the African diet. Laced with political barbs and advocacy ciphers, the work is funny and crass, moving and evolved and little […]
PICTURE THE SCENARIO. Suddenly, everything that you may have known in your life has been curtailed down to extreme basics. You’ve a toilet and running water. Electricity. Some magazines, maybe. You can hear what is going on, but cannot reach it. Does anyone know that you are there? […]
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