David Fick - Page 8

It is rare to find a piece as beautifully shaped for a specific age group as Magnet Theatre's enchanting TREE / BOOM / UMTHI. Created for 3 - 7 year olds, it engages its audiences with stories and images plucked from the world that surrounds them.

SILENT VOICE is something else. An audacious play written and directed by Aubrey Sekhabi, it shatters conservative middle class perceptions of that which represents a compelling theatre experience and is the kind of confrontational and provocative theatre that we do not see often enough on main stem stages in this country.

The Baxter Dance Festival celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. The festival should be a cultural institution on Cape Town's annual calendar, an ideal point of convergence for links between the dance community and the community at large.

Every now and then, a piece of theatre comes along that could be described as a kind of 'gateway drug': a show that people will remember being incredibly entertaining and that might make them think that this business of going to the theatre is worth all the fuss. DIRTY WORDS is that kind of show.

The premiere of Rafiek Mammon's new play, THE GARAGE SALE is marketed as a sardonic exploration of the darker, yet funnier, side of Cape Town suburbia, an explicitly edgy play dealing with the effects of rape.

As a play text, WOUNDS TO THE FACE is perhaps not as brutal an onslaught on audience reception as some of Howard Barker's other plays, but this production by the University of Cape Town's Drama Department certainly does reveal how challenging the piece is to realise as theatre, especially for young actors who can take away a great deal from engaging with a piece like this.

Grammy award-winning violinist, producer and humanitarian Miri Ben-Ari has released a statement in response to the announcement that the 14th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in South Africa has been cancelled.

There is a great deal going on in the mind-scape that is PIET SE OPTELGOED. A piece of theatre that defies labels, it could be described as post-modern feminist visual theatre of the absurd.

…MISKIEN was the debut production of The Pink Couch, the company founded by Tara Notcutt, Albert Pretorius, Gideon Lombard and Mat Lewis. Written by Notcutt, Pretorius and Lombard, it was a landmark production for the fledgling theatre-makers and toured the festival circuit, locally and internationally, drawing audiences into the world of Cormac and Layton, two characters that feel like they have stepped out of your life and onto the stage.

OLD KIT BAG is a small show with a big heart, paying tribute to the power that music has to bring people together in times of trouble. It is a good old-fashioned great night out.

Whichever way you look at it, THE VERTICAL HOUR is an engaging and challenging play. Hare has given directors and actors the ingredients of a meaty theatrical dish, and audiences a great deal to digest.

With its alternative creative springboard, STRUCK SILENT captures a sense of what it means to be an aging person in a modern society, but the piece never fully distils its inspirations into a thesis that confronts, challenges or moves the audience in the moment of performance.

Abrahamse & Meyer Productions are back at the Artscape Arena with ONE ARM, the company's latest exploration of the work of Tennessee Williams and the first of which is a new adaptation of a non-theatrical work by the iconic playwright and author.

A good friend of mine often says that stand-up comedy is one of those things that cannot be mediocre. Due to the technicality that the show consists of a line-up of three comics, FUNNIER THAN THEM bucks the trend and manages to be a thoroughly mediocre affair.

In THE KINGMAKERS, Viljoen turns his hand to political satire, delving into the dark side of oppositional politics, where the word of the spin doctors is law and where secrets hold more weight than transparency.

Previews for Abrahamse & Meyer's production of ONE ARM started last night at the Artscape Arena, with company founders Fred Abrahamse and Marcel Meyer returning to the work of Tennessee Williams in their latest collaboration.

EMOTIONAL CREATURE is a piece of theatre that is incredibly well-tailored for its target audience of teenage girls, who will love this production should they have the opportunity to visit the Baxter Theatre during its short ten day run.

OSCAR AND THE PINK LADY is structured as a series of letters to God by the play's protagonist, ten-tear-old Oscar. This review is written as a response to this deeply poignant play's structure.

FRANÇOISE HARDY & BREL, SO ALIVE, SO WELL! locates itself within the tradition of popular entertainment in cabaret, an unassuming compilation of songs made famous by Francoise Hardy and Jacques Brel, threaded together by the slightest suggestion of a narrative concept in which the two meet in a Parisian cabaret club in the early 1960s.

BLUEPRINT is the high profile, alternative new dance project by Darkroom Contemporary, a project being presented under the World Design Capital banner at the Cape Town City Hall. Louise Coetzer choreographs a quartet of dances on a sestet of dancers to make up the programme.