Tag: Sandton

Tricks and balances

WHAT ARE THE odds that a hefty dose of chicanery, some treachery and a handful of sluttery will win the day? In Cat & Monkey, a work rewritten for stage based on the eponymous de la Fontaine fable of the 15th century, Danielle Retief and Rowlen von Gericke […]

Two wrongs; two siblings

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT a man at the tail end of a long career, who holds tight to his dignity and even tighter to his broken dreams. It’s a quality as much about tragedy and heroism as it is about vulnerability, and in the central role of John Kani’s […]

For those who died as cattle

IT TAKES IMMENSE skill and maturity to know that the telling of a story filled with detail and drama, with interstices of horror and loss and replete with almost 60-year-old ghosts is done not with gimmicks and tricks, with big noise and flashing lights, but with an old […]

How to teach a child to ride a bicycle

VICIOUSNESS IS OFT a convenient veil to wear in the face of extreme anguish. Playwright Simon Woods takes a rich and complex understanding of social values and their tipping points in his extraordinary play, Hansard. Coupled with incisive direction by Robert Whitehead and a give-and-take performance by Fiona […]

Shimmy down memory lane with Kate

A SHOW WITH a gleaming singer in tight sparkly lamé and a fur boa, her memories of the hardships and joys of a life on stage, and an accompanist on piano, sticking to the world’s best standards is not a novel idea. Toss the inimitable Kate Normington into […]

Mantoa: Forgotten by Death

AS THIS FILM begins to unfurl, there are moments, from a cinematographic perspective that will leave you with your mouth hanging open. Devastatingly beautiful washes of colour and light conveying men on horses and a community broken by discontent permeate this work like swathes of poetry. This film, […]

RIP Ventura Rosenthal: Heavenly harpist

TRIBUTE TO VENTURA ROSENTHAL RESEARCHED BY MISHKA OLIVIER. NONA VENTURA ROSENTHAL, a brilliant musician and a true treasure to everyone who met her, gave a friendly and popular profile to the notoriously difficult-to-play harp. She succumbed to breast cancer, which she had battled since 2014, on 6 November […]