In terms of power she wields both as a character and a performer, Mpume Mthombeni as Nomsa is God in a pair of 1950s-evocative horn-rimmed specs and a dress appropriate to a middle-aged woman. She carries the world on her head and can invoke humility or catastrophe with a gesture.
‘The Moon Looks Beautiful From Here’ is Aldo Bincat’s beautiful and universal piece, written in simple language with a deft hand and clearly over a great many years of emotions spent and ideas thought and revisited, sometimes in great pain. It’s a touchstone work and a clear victory in storytelling.
The narrative of ‘A Streetcar’ is rich with tropes central to the South African taxi industry, and its complex social and economic history. Listen to the discourse. Taxiology in South Africa is a real thing, about spicy micro-narratives and social protocol as well as about God, the universe and everything.
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 […]
FILM REVIEW: THE BARBERSHOP CHRONICLES. WHERE IS IT that African men get to kick back, let their hair down and loosen their tongues? The communal urinal? The local bar? Under the pen of Inua Ellams, it’s the barbershop; South African writers of the ilk of Tony Miyambo, Sue […]
EVERYONE KNEW HER face. Everyone. When SABC anchor Tracy Going was brutally beaten by her boyfriend, it was knowledge instantly in the public domain. This was a story that rocked South Africa, not only for its grotesquely sensationalist value, but it opened up a whole hornet’s nest of […]
GRAVEYARDS ARE FASCINATING and complex ciphers of values. They’re about grounding one’s memories and honouring those who are no longer with us. They’re about a level of sacredness which touches everyone at the core. This is the premise of Athol Fugard’s devastatingly potent work, The Train Driver and […]
FORTY YEARS AGO the Market Theatre was established in Johannesburg. It was the same year as the Soweto Uprising. South Africa was suppurating in a mire of apartheid, to the backdrop of sanctions, disinvestment and states of emergency. Terrible people were doing terrible things. This period was the incubator […]
I thought I dreamed it. I remember the words “Theatre is dead in SA” on a street pole advert in black type on a while background under the dark blue logo of a weekly national paper, a few days ago in Johannesburg. And I filed the recollection of […]
As he clambers onstage in the glimmer before the production begins, you’re discomforted: you are not sure if he’s man or beast. It’s an ambiguity Tony Miyambo holds with sublime authority over the duration of this astonishing piece of theatre, allowing Franz Kafka’s disturbing 1917 tale of Red […]
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