SOUTH AFRICA THEATER REVIEWS

There is a meme making the rounds on Facebook at the moment. Above an image of the cast of the television series, FRIENDS, a caption reads: 'This documentary of White Privilege is kinda long and hard to watch, but DAMN. Really lays it all out there.' This revival of I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW C...

ANGELS ON HORSEBACK: RELOADED is a revival of a successful cabaret first devised by Fiona du Plooy - who directs this reboot - and Candice D'Arcy in 2007. Daneel van der Walt and Alicia McCormick saddle up for a wild ride through a series of original songs, covers and parodies, some crazy banter and...

Theatre can bring people to the threshold of revelation; theatre can also engender revolution. NIQABI NINJA achieves the former, but its limited theatricality presents it from going further. Its essential commentary outlined, NIQABI NINJA needs now to amplify, unapologetically, what it has to say....

Lara Foot's latest play, THE INCONVENIENCE OF WINGS, has been seven years in the making. Since Foot started dreaming up this startling, intimate tale about the challenges of living with a mental disorder, both as a patient and a caregiver, this play achieving the same rich fulfilment of the promise ...

DANI & THE LION is cabaret as it was meant to be. Created by Daneel van der Walt, who performs original songs and stories with a cameo appearance by a few unexpected classic tunes, this show sets the gold standard for this trickiest of theatre genres....

ACTRESSES: AN ADAPTATION OF CHEKHOV'S 'THE SEAGULL' is the kind of production that captures one's attention. The poster is excellent, with an image that is as provocative as production company Black Hole Collective's description of their work. Anon Chekhov's 1895 drama was first produced the followi...

The winner of a Silver Standard Bank Ovation Award last year, Robaby's FATHER, FATHER, FATHER is back on the National Lottery Fringe at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. A devilishly wicked satire, this physical theatre piece was created by cast members Roberto Pombo, Joni Barnard and Racha...

PEOPLE BENEATH OUR FEET is the first original play from Hungry Minds Productions, written by Katya Mendelson and Kiroshan Naidoo in response to the refugee crisis that has been the result of the Syrian civil war. This new play grapples with important issues and represents a significant development f...

Although OUT OF BOUNDS is highly watchable, director Crizelle Anthony should re-interrogate her production thoroughly so as to refine both her vision and her execution of this still significant South African play by Rajesh Gopie...

SCRATCH, written by Heather Livesey, describes itself as an 'indie style musical'. The piece comes across very much like a first draft, with its far-fetched and flimsy plot never finding any kind of coherent throughline in which an audience can truly invest its engagement....

What happens when your parents' legacy is one of violence, alcoholism and abuse? That question is at the heart of THE GRAVEYARD, Philip Rademeyer's magnificent new play for the Rust Co-Operative....

The first Standard Bank Ovation Award winner of the 2016 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, BIRD/FISH, is a solo exhibition by Kristin NG-Yang....

SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD delivered an engaging 85 minutes of musical theatre, managing to explore a clear thesis while doing so. Like some of the musicals presented at the Student Arts Festival over the past few years, it raised the bar of what can be accomplished on this platform in this genre....

Certain parts of Jason Robert Brown's score for SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD have been translated for a new South African production of the show which is currently being performed at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. The intention is to explore possibilities for a greater connection for both the p...

WHISTLE STOP, Ameera Patel's play about a brief encounter between a man and a woman in a park, is being revived at the National Arts Festival by Dark Laugh Theatre Company and Hijinks Theatre this year. Having won a Standard Bank Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival in 2014, the play is an ab...

Piecing together a new mythology is an audacious undertaking, and yet it is an act that is at the very heart of theatre-making: the building of a new world, with its own origins and order, that only becomes fully realised when an audience believes in it. THE FIREBIRD attempts just that, telling a po...

In the months since its premiere at the National Arts Festival last year, Greg Homann and Ralph Lawson's A VOICE I CANNOT SILENCE has played seasons in Johannesburg and Durban, garnered critical acclaim and won three Naledi Theatre Awards. Finally making its bow in the Mother City at the Fugard Thea...

An independently produced fringe theatre piece, VACANCY prompts two BroadwayWorld South Africa reviews in one article....

Even if A COCK AND BULL STORY ultimately pulls its punches, the two performances around which Marthinus Basson builds his production are stellar, most likely some of the best work South African audiences will see on stage this year....

Mongiwekhaya's I SEE YOU / NGIYAKUBONA / EK SIEN JOU / NDIYAKUBONA places the issue of reconciliation within and between black communities within the wider context of South Africa's fractured rainbow nation - an image that was perhaps more idealistic than true....

Penny Youngleson's new play accomplishes its enlightenment through a domestic scenario without ever becoming didactic or patronising; that it does so by using a powerful, unique and pliable central metaphor makes SILLAGE all the more remarkable....

Cape Town City Ballet is nothing if not ambitious. SHADES OF LOVE sees the company's featured artists dancing superbly, but the production never coheres into a fully-realised evening of ballet....

Rob van Vuuren's LIFE is a side-splitting observation of the way we live today. Van Vuuren is uproariously funny, landing the many laughs that he sets up with his particularly distinctive flair. But watch out if you're seated in the first few rows......

YOU SUCK (AND OTHER INESCAPABLE TRUTHS) is hilariously biting comedy from playwright-performer Klara van Wyk, keeping the audiences in stitches of laughter from start to finish as she delves into the depths what it means to be a school pupil in our turbulent times....

In FROM THE HEART, the focus on and celebration of June Carter Cash as an individual is long past due, a welcome realignment of her story from her own perspective rather than as a supporting player in the narrative of her husband, the man in black, Johnny Cash....