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BWW Reviews: Jon Keevy's EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING a Play Sewn Like Delicate Lace
EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING is a bittersweet microcosm of the human experience. It is in grappling with these two sisters' encounter that elusive thoughts rise to the surface about what lies behind the artifice of one's own life. Beautiful pain. Finding one in the other is our only hope....
BWW Reviews: Savvy and Sassy LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS an Enjoyable Musical Romp
Some three decades after its first premiere, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS still delivers on its promise to be an enjoyable romp for its audiences. In this production, there is a great deal of fun to be had in the kind of musical that offers only the slightest commentary on the world around us - 'whatever ...
BWW Reviews: Too Little Life in Matthew Wild's CABARET at the Fugard, Old Chum
The Fugard Theatre's production of CABARET begins with a perfectly realised moment of theatre. Before long, the magic of that moment wears off, and this production of the classic John Kander, Fred Ebb and Joe Masteroff musical begins to flounder in Matthew Wild's directionless staging of the piece....
BWW Reviews: New South African Show ORPHEUS IN AFRICA All Set for Classic Musical Status
ORPHEUS IN AFRICA is all set to be a grand, old-fashioned classic musical in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition. Kramer has unearthed a fantastic historical footnote and found the reason that this story deserves to be raised into our consciousness more than a century after Orpheus McAdoo's death ...
BWW Reviews: (Un)Making Men in MOFFIE a Vision for Dance That Matters
Billed as Bailey Snyman's dance interpretation of Andre Carl van der Merwe's novel, MOFFIE sets itself a demanding task in adapting and translating the themes of Van der Merwe's harrowing novel. That's enough to hope that MOFFIE is a piece that earns support so that Snyman and his Matchbox Theatre C...
BWW Reviews: Devastatingly Competent OTHELLO Leaves Audience Out in the Cold at Maynardville
Fred Abrahamse's staging of OTHELLO fails to capture the accelerating spiral in which the titular character finds himself on the way to his doom; this OTHELLO is a bland, watered down affair that is, at best, a devastatingly competent reading of the play....
BWW Reviews: Operatic SAMSA-MASJIEN an Intense Rendering of and Meditation on Humanity
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 seem...
BWW Reviews: Penelope Youngleson's NAT a Noble and Essential Reality Check
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 ...
BWW Reviews: ANTHOLOGY: A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER a Hip and Happening Short Format Theatre Space
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....
BWW Reviews: Beautifully Articulate WAR HORSE a Theatrical Juggernaut
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....
BWW Reviews: Promising New Voices Emerge in Papercut Collective's UHM
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....
BWW Reviews: THE PERVERT LAURA a Subversive Play from an Audacious Playwright
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 da...
BWW Reviews: THE SWELL a Fantastic Metaphor for Identity, Trauma and Transformation
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....
BWW Reviews: BLUE is a Testament to Cape Dance Company's Artistry and Vision
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....
BWW Reviews: SMAARTIES a Committed Look at Schizophrenia as Performance
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....
BWW Reviews: Revised and Improved RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS at the Artscape Still Not a Game Changer
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....
BWW Reviews: Lucy is Tops in STEALING THE SHOW: BETTE MIDLER – but the Show Views Bette 'From a Distance'
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?...
BWW Reviews: Pop Culture Classic CURL UP AND DYE Still a Relevant Discourse on Race and Gender
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 class...
BWW Reviews: Plewman is Great, but Pencil-Thin THE LAST MOUSTACHE Needs More Bristle
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....
BWW Reviews: ASHES Offers a Glimpse of the Kindling and a Glance at the Flames of Systemic Homophobia in South Africa
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...
BWW Reviews: TREE / BOOM / UMTHI an Enchanting Experience for the Littlies
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....
BWW Reviews: Sekhabi's SILENT VOICE is Gripping, Immersive and Shocking
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...
BWW Reviews: BAXTER DANCE FESTIVAL an Ideal Point of Convergence for Society and the Arts
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....
BWW Reviews: DIRTY WORDS Goes (Down) Like Gangbusters at the Kalk Bay Theatre
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....
BWW Reviews: Detailed Direction and Performances Buoy Unfocused Writing in THE GARAGE SALE
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....
Videos
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MAMMA MIA! The Musical! Artscape Opera House (9/03-10/11) |
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MAMMA MIA! Artscape Theatre (9/03-10/11) |
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Enrico Brignano - Bello di Mamma 2026 Mapo Club (9/01-9/01) |
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PRETTY WOMAN: The Musical Teatro at Montecasino (4/24-5/31) |
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Enrico Brignano - Bello di Mamma 2026 Piazza del Duomo di Pistoia (7/06-7/06) |
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MAMMA MIA! The Musical! Teatro at Montecasino (10/16-11/22) |
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Swan Lake Teatro at Montecasino (8/07-8/21) |
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MAMMA MIA! The Musical! Artscape Theatre (9/03-10/11) |
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MAMMA MIA! Artscape Opera House (9/03-10/11) |
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MAMMA MIA! Teatro at Montecasino (10/16-11/22) |
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