The high end musical Pretty Woman never pretends that the arrangement between Vivian and Edward is anything other than what it is. She’s a prostitute; he’s a rich guy. It is a deal, and both of them know it. But knowing something and feeling it are two different things.
This story has a weight that cannot be told with a clean chronology. It’s about love and loss and big promises which are devastating and seismic to keep. It’s about holding on to the things that matter and the memories of love on a light tower in a music festival.
The question of a baby is answered severally as the play unfolds. It’s an answer concerning life, the universe and everything, rather than being about The Right Thing to Do at this time in a relationship. ‘Lungs’ takes us right through life’s trajectory, and it’s agonisingly relatable, whatever your age.
The production is delightful. It offers the now-57-year-old musical levity. As it opens, the lighting is rich with nuance. It feels like you’re gazing at a tableau of Rembrandt’s 1635 Belshazzar’s Feast not only for its colouration, but also in the evoked debauchery, teetering on the edge of biblical taboo.
‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ has a strong moral back bone without being clean of fart and snot jokes that are endemic to being a tween, and performed, by a cast which is itself, adolescent, is nothing short of a magical success on the part of its director, Vicky Friedman.
In ‘Thrill Me’, lighting in tandem with language and movement achieves greatness, lifting the spectacle to a sinister monochrome in the face of the greatest sin one human being can perpetrate against another. Balance in the performers’ movements and the story’s nuances, makes it satisfying on eye, ear and mind.
As loud, hard-edged stage musicals go, where the characters are dwarfed by massive technological sets, the lyrics are profoundly superficial and the lights set to penetrate your eyelids, Dear Evan Hansen presents technical competence. There are some beautiful moments of harmony between singers. Stuart Brown opposite Michael Stray collaborate compellingly.
‘Bitter Winter’ happens in a waiting room. It’s about apartheid and the shifting of the world from analogue to digital. It’s about how tightly one holds onto one’s embarrassing and life-forming secrets as it is about being in the same proverbial boat as another actor, regardless of age or experience.
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.
In this show, Thamm riffs on about the Guptas’ exposure and the all-seeing eyes of DA leader, Helen Zille. She talks a million miles a second of the insane outcomes of everything from Covid legislation to stolen billions of Rands and whistle-blowers, who have shaped (and saved) this country’s face.
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