THE SIMPLE, TIMELESS lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel are the kinds of conjoined words and ideas that may have slipped so quietly into your sensibilities that you may not remember how well you know them, until you’re sitting in the audience of the revue of the Simon and […]
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 […]
THE WELSH VILLAGE of Aberfan in October of 1966 weathered a catastrophe worse than anyone could have imagined. At 09:15 in the morning of an otherwise ordinary but wet day, a colliery spoil tip slid down the mountain and drowned a primary school in a 12m-deep avalanche of […]
CROSS OUT ANY plans you may have for tomorrow, Sunday October 14. The achingly brief season of Steven Berkoff’s Metamorphosis under the direction of Alby Michaels ends on that day, and it is a production you will deeply regret if you miss it. Of the calibre of Molière’s […]
SEXUALITY, SONG AND the fear of losing what matters comes under the loupe in Choir Boy, a hard-hitting, yet simple play which is sensitively and relevantly translocated from an American context to a local one. Comprising a cast of four young men who articulate the groups and cliques, […]
VERY OCCASIONALLY, SOMETHING comes along which not only ticks every conceivable box in terms of a great production, but it also sets the audience on fire with delicious abandon, and has otherwise demure people dancing in the aisles like demons; people who will drive home with the CD […]
Remember Sesame Street and the values it espoused on generations of children? Well, 15 years ago, the makers of Avenue Q worked with its basic puppetting premises and ramped it up to a whole new set of narrative values. Now, in its 15th year, it explodes in a […]
THE TROUBLING TRUTHS of the prevalence of the selfie and the way in which contemporary society is so deeply focused on its cell phones is something that has been pondered by thinkers and hacks alike. Social media seems to be here to stay, and it’s pulling our values […]
THE OPENING NIGHT of Dance Umbrella 2018 was one filled with gasps. Gasps at the formal announcement by its artistic director Georgina Thomson that this, the 30th iteration of the contemporary dance festival was to be its last. And gasps in response to the quality of work curated […]
THE POTENTIALLY SINISTER and foetid context of what goes on — or used to go on — behind closed farm doors in grim and unbending religious South Africa comes under close and gory scrutiny in Reza de Wet’s riveting tale of incest and dirt, horror and gamesplaying. It’s […]
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