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.
In ‘Black Coffee’, everything, from a complete colour wheel of deadliest poison, to the toby jug in the room, to the sub-plot of secret plans for a bomb, not to forget the costumes and pin curls of the era, is perfectly handled. This is a well-made play at its best.
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.
In the hands of Daniel Butcher-Geddes, The Jungle Book’s all fun and games until the really scary beasts are part of the fray. And it’s here that you will see easily the finest snake puppet given life on stage in this country by Virtuous Kandemiri in the role of Kaa.
THEATRE IS NO only alive and pumping in South Africa; it is world class. Take a gander at Ashley Dowds in one of this country’s contemporary classics, Paul Slabolepszy’s The Return of Elvis du Pisane, and you’re got the picture: gritty, funny, tragic, universal and something that will […]
MUSICAL TALES THAT wag a finger or six at values which keep young blood closeted in ignorance have a danger of warming the cockles of the heart even before the curtain rises. Sylvaine Strike’s adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s establishment-rattling work Spring Awakening which was only first performed some […]
WHEN YOU THINK of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer’s perfectly wonderful play of 1979 that cast mischievous light into the mysterious nooks and untold crannies of the life of 18th century Vienna composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the first thing that comes to mind is the music, that Confutatis from Mozart’s […]
WHEN YOU HAVE the chutzpah to vroom, as fast as your thighs can push onto a largish stage to a live audience, mounted on a Checkers bike made for a toddler, you know that you will have your audience’s attention from the get-go. This is Alan Committie in […]
IT ALL BEGINS with a bit of masked and gloved mystique that gets even the littlest of littlies focused on the stage. That is the kind of magical lure you will experience in this version of Alice in Wonderland, that graces the stage this season. And it’s a […]
WHAT, REALLY CONSTITUTES a life-long friendship? Is it the sharing of trauma? Is it found in people who you were schooled with as infants? Is it about the people you found yourself shoved up against in the army? For George (Alan Committie) and Doris (Sharon Spiegel-Wagner), it’s about […]
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