David Fick - Page 7

The premiere of SAMSA-MASJIEN in the Baxter Theatre's Flipside venue last week was my second experience of the play. I previously saw the piece at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK) last year, where it was staged in a hangar on the grounds of the South African National Defence Force, a seemingly infinite space that suited the operatic scope of the production a little better than the relatively more intimate (though still fairly sized) alternative theatre venue at the Baxter Theatre. Nonetheless, SAMSA-MASJIEN remains an intense rendering of and meditation on aging, the nature of dementia, family and compassion.

Penelope Youngleson and Philip Rademeyer's Rust Co-Operative is a theatre collective that does not shy away from controversial and provocative subject matter. The company's new play, NAT, written and directed by Youngleson is a brutal, no-holds-barred look at the reality of the lives of children in disadvantaged communities.

It is the last day of 2014 and this final look at 'six of the best' plays to appear on South African stages finishes up BroadwayWorld's review of the past year's theatre.

The penultimate column in our 2014 South African Theatre Retrospectives deals with musical theatre and opera. Today we celebrate 'six of the best' opera and musical theatre productions from around the country - with two honourable mentions for an outstanding cabaret and revue - having already looked at some of the best plays and dance productions of the year.

2014 is almost over, which means that BroadwayWorld South Africa is in the midst of taking a look back at the past year in theatre. This third column of five in this retrospective series on South African theatre in 2014 raises the curtain on six more of the best plays that have been produced on stages around the country.

2014 is almost done and dusted and as part of a series of five columns that reviews the past year of South African theatre, this second 'six of the best' column serves as an overview of the best South African dance and physical theatre of the past year.

As 2014 speeds along to its final curtain, it is once again time to reflect on some of the theatrical highlights on South Africa's stages over the past 12 months. First up, we have six of the best plays seen in theatres around the country this year.

Compilations usually end up being a bit of a curate's egg, but the format of ANTHOLOGY makes for an invigorating night at the theatre - even if only two thirds of the programme of A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER succeeds at delivering a satisfying theatrical experience.

WAR HORSE has finally made its way onto South African stages, currently in the second and final leg of its national tour. As many a headline has declared since the local tour was announced: Joey has come home.

As a part of its mandate to showcase new voices, Artscape is presenting, in association with the newly formed Papercut Collective, UHM, a play that takes a satirical look at the enduring legacy of colonialism in Africa.

You have to hand it to Louis Viljoen. The man is an honest-to-god real-as-they-come playwright, and he explores something new in every play he writes. His latest piece, THE PERVERT LAURA, is a taut psychological drama about a woman whose past manifests itself her present, driving her to face some dark truths and make some difficult choices.

Imagine watching Lewis Carroll's Alice chat to the Caterpillar for an hour. That's a good place to begin imagining what THE SWELL, the play collaboratively created and presented by Horses' Heads Productions and Fruitzalad Productions, is like.

Nobody does dance on local stages like the Cape Dance Company (CDC). Their 2013 season of CADENCE at the Artscape Theatre was the local dance highlight of the year and they top themselves in 2014's presentation of BLUE, a compilation of eight eclectic pieces from half a dozen choreographers.

Last Sunday, Play Club celebrated its second anniversary with a reading of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Christopher Sergel's stage adaptation of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Play Club is a monthly event in Cape Town that was initiated by Drew Rienstra with the vision of building a community among theatre lovers, including actors, theatre-makers, filmmakers, educators, critics and theatre audiences.

In SMAARTIES, performance becomes a metaphor for schizophrenia, with everything in Jannes Erasmus's script to in Quintin Wils's design and direction and Jaco Jansen van Rensburg's videography calculated to a embody a single character's psychosis.

Although the basic outline of the play remains the same, RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS has been revised in the four months that have passed since its premiere. The new script and its associated theatrical production improve on the earlier version of the play.

There is a sense of complacency that infiltrates almost every aspect of STEALING THE SHOW: BETTE MIDLER. Is there any point in paying tribute to a performer like Bette Midler and ignoring almost everything that makes her distinctive in the first place?

CURL UP AND DYE emerges as a still relevant piece of theatre some 25 years after its original premiere. Every issue that the play serves up - from racism and the systematic abuse of women to prostitution and the scourge of drugs and alcohol - still haunts this country. It may not be one of the classic greats, but it certainly is a pop culture staple of the South African theatre landscape.

THE LAST MOUSTACHE certainly has an intriguing premise and indulges in some fun meta-theatricality as Tim Plewman does his best to sell the audience on the material.

Watching a new production by the Rust Co-operative, the two-year old theatre company co-founded by Philip Rademeyer and Penny Youngleson, comes with the knowledge that the audience will be presented with a piece of theatre that, one the one hand, aims to offer a powerful emotional experience and, on the other, grapples with the socio-political milieu of contemporary life in the South African and global communities