Cape Town City Ballet’s A Christmas Carol, The Story of Scrooge is excellent festive family fun, a classic-but-light lesson in the power of good over evil, of generosity over meanness. Real Christmas spirit stuff. The cast, which often seems largely made up of children and child-like adults, delivers a jolly, heart-warming evening of playfulness and …
There is a reason that Nik Rabinowitz packs the house at the Baxter year after year. How we all love that hour or two of riotous laughter, the opportunity to step away from all the nonsense around us and laugh at a lot of it. I was surprised to hear this year that Nik is …
Less than a week after hearing Zolani Mahola tell her very powerful and personal story, seeing An Extraordinarily Ordinary Life at Alexander Bar felt like paying another instalment on an old debt (for bullets dodged). An Extraordinarily Ordinary Life is Jervis Pennington’s story, told by himself, of how he went from lead singer in a …
We remember Zolani Mahola performing with Shakira at the opening ceremony of the Football World Cup 2010, the eyes of South Africa, a broken country longing for healing, focused on the pint-sized powerhouse. What we don’t know is that her energy and joyfulness belied a lifetime of pain carried inside. The lead singer of Freshlyground, …
Full circle with ‘the one who sings’ … and writes and heals Read More »
There are a lot of extras on the latest flight of fantasy from the Trolley Dollies – new cast members, some very impressively choreographed, well-rehearsed dance numbers, even eyewear from Oculus – but Three Blind Mice is also the classic, trashy, first-class fun we have come to expect from the rudest and brassiest of broads, …
More first-class silliness from the Trolley Dollies Read More »
Cape Town City Ballet’s appropriately (and rather deliciously) titled Satori certainly felt like enlightenment, if not so sudden. We have been watching this incredible transformation for a while. It is a delight to see Debbie Turner and her team breathing of new life into this fabulous ‘old’ ballet company. Satori, a trilogy of works – …
The fact that we are still watching plays like Statements After An Arrest Under The Immorality Act, which is showing at the Fugard, is evidence of how short a distance we have travelled in a reasonably long time. Even if this new production of Athol Fugard’s powerful show, is my story, our story – whites …
shnit film festival: a feast of delicious tastes of parallel realities
Sleeping Beauty is an enduring and wonderful story, but the real fairytale in Cape Town City Ballet’s new production on Saturday August 17 was to see the extraordinarily talented Precious Adams dancing in her own ‘skin’. Adams, of the English National Ballet, is a black dancer who wears tights and shoes that match her natural …
There is more than one fairytale in dazzling new Sleeping Beauty Read More »
Review: Kinky Boots, at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, until October 27 Even the most curmudgeonly of curmudgeons will find it hard not to be cheered by this lovely show. Haters of the musical format, too, will be forced to crack a smile at how the cheesy formula of a preachy but ultimately uplifting …