‘So Long, Marianne’, a tribute to Marianne Faithfull is not only about the 1960s peaceniks or the proliferation of drug-users of the 1970s, it’s a piece threaded through with Shakespeare to make you weep, taking the voice of an angel to the depths of the demonic, with cigarettes and time.
Now in her sixties and not afraid to take hold of the world with both hands, Elzabe Zietsman’s revue comprises a mêlée of songs which she has penned and others she has moulded to fit South Africa’s unique levels of hypocrisy, hatred and hope, sometimes all in the same breath.
SOMETHING HAS TO be said about the value of sheer fresh, spoof-driven comedy which tosses industry in-jokes in the air as liberally as it does asides from movies, and in which the cast have as much fun – or more – as you do, in the audience. Throw […]
THERE’S NOTHING QUITE like celebrating your birthday with a lovely friend. This is what the central character in The Red Balloon, played by Craig Morris, discovers, as he takes you on a magical madcap journey through a whole gamut of emotions, armed with simple tools and complex skills. […]
STRIP THINGS DOWN to their bare basics. What do you really need to make a production that sings while it reaches boldly into the interstices of everyone’s heart? The Old and the Beautiful with Tony Bentel and Fiona Ramsay is a show that has seen many summers and […]
IF YOU SEE one show this festival – or maybe this lifetime – do whatever is necessary to get to see Firefly. In the tight and clear but unabashedly mad ethos that Sylvaine Strike opposite Andrew Buckland represent, this play touches on the big questions of life in […]
IN THIS WORLD, where there is a growing pall of homophobic legislation in a whole clutch of countries, it is a breath of fresh air to see drag pushed all the way out in the spotlight. New York-based Men in Tutus brings some frissons of lewdness, a healthy […]
THEY TEETER INTO the theatre on high heels, with grotesque wigs askew and sparkly gloves, reeking of the kind of skanky, grubby ethos that defined 1980s Hillbrow or 1990s Troyeville in a very typically South African context. This is the cast of the first half of Heaven is […]
LIKE BEETHOVEN’S FIFTH Symphony or Van Gogh’s ear, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake has become iconic in a very broad understanding of what western culture is. Go to anyone in the street and competently whistle the tune of the Song of the Cygnets and they will know what you’re on […]
THE HORROR OF hatred within a community comes firmly under the loupe in this important play, which boldly explores the underbelly and the universality of pain within a culture. Hallelujah! intertwines religious values with social bias, poetry with music and young voices with veteran ones. In short, it […]
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