You must see ‘The Piano Lesson’ because of Lerato Mvelase as Berniece and Warren Masemola as Lymon. Masemola, all limbs and voice, carries his character, an outsider to the unfolding family tale, with engaging lightness. Mvelase plays a woman with a deep sense of injustice she’s not afraid to use.
IT WAS THE late Alan Crump, Chairman of the National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown, during the 1990s, who used to quip about the so-called “blue rinse and boiling sweet brigade”, who the festival organisers had to take seriously because they represented a money backbone of the […]
WHEN YOU ARE able to be present in a huge concrete interior in which one woman and her voice can with clear authority, take control of the whole space, with a packed audience and a vault that reaches storeys into the sky, you know you are in the […]
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 […]
PICTURE THE FAMOUS bit of Western classical musical composed in 1928 by Maurice Ravel and called Boléro translated into raw sobs. Picture a professional mourner at a cemetery and a cast of close to 40 in costumes magicked to life by Black Coffee. Picture it all against a […]
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, […]
WHEN YOU ENTER the theatre, you might be full of frissons of excitement contingent on the promises of Fire and Ice, the name of this double bill danced by Joburg Ballet. As the works unfold, you might feel oddly let down. At best, the ice you will experience […]
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 […]
IT TAKES SPECIAL skill to tease open one of theatre and literature’s greatest works and to reinvent it. It takes even more special skill and creative bravery to be able to produce a work on stage that has been produced on myriads of other stages all over the world […]
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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