By BRUCE DENNILL This is the album Twin Atlantic made once they felt they’d achieved everything they set out to do when they formed the band. That they have the mettle to do that now, when they’re a big band, but not a massive, ...
By BRUCE DENNILL I had two interactions with Chris Cornell. The first was after his set at the My Coke Fest music festival in Johannesburg in 2008, perhaps the most exciting reason ever to go to a racetrack in Alberton. I was covering the ...
By BRUCE DENNILL Terminator: Genisys / Directed by Alan Taylor / PG13 5 Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice / Directed by Zack Snyder / 13V ...
By BRUCE DENNILL, ROB HOFMEYR & DRIES BRUNT Power Play by Mike Nicol 6.5 Isis: The Heart Of Terror by Eugene Bach 7 Permanent Removal by Alan Cowell 7 Mike Nicol’s tales of gangsters, petty criminals and the investigators who either scrutinise or ...
By BRUCE DENNILL In Bocca Al Lupo / Directed by Jane Taylor / Ramalao Makhene Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg Jemma Kahn has created a fantastical one-woman niche as the leading (and perhaps only) exponent of kamishibai – a Japanese street theatre art form that involves quickfire ...
0For French actress Pom Klementieff, getting the part of Mantis in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was the beginning of an exciting experience. “When I had the audition, I had no idea how ...
2By BRUCE DENNILL I had two interactions with Chris Cornell. The first was after his set at the My Coke Fest music festival in Johannesburg in 2008, perhaps the most exciting reason ever to go to a ...
0CHAPTER ONE It was a foul night to hang a man. The rain swept across the Irish Sea, throwing itself against the grey stone walls of Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison. Behind its unyielding façade two prison guards stood ...
0By BEN WRIGHT “Yes, there are a lot of tourists in Iceland now, perhaps too many,” said Silvia, in perfect English and with no irony. Her daughters, who spoke English too, as well as Icelandic and Zulu, ...
0By BRUCE DENNILL Tuning The Vine / 4th Avenue Parkhurst / 1 March 2017 Publicised using the hashtag #JoziWineRoute, Tuning The Vine was an interesting stab at bringing some of the poetry of a winelands-style wine tasting to ...
0Art therapy takes place when individuals are encouraged to express themselves through art as part of a healing process from emotional trauma. For children who experience violence or domestic abuse, drawing or painting provides a way to say what they cannot say with words. For the
0A dazzling night, a glittering ball, something wonderful is sure to happen when the ultimate fairytale – Joburg Ballet’s production of Cinderella – returns to
0Since the 1960s, Pieter-Dirk Uys has been poking fun at the country’s past while finding hilarious ways to ensure it progresses positively. The satirist, performer,
7 By BRUCE DENNILL Canadian singer, songwriter and guitarist Ian Thornley’s journey with his band Big Wreck has been multi-monikered: Big Wreck, then Ian Thornley (solo), then Ian Thornley & Big Wreck and now back under the single banner again. Whatever the finer details, that ...
4 By BRUCE DENNILL West Side Story / Directed by Matthew Wild / Mandela, Joburg Theatre, Braamfontein, Johannesburg There’s a good deal of nostalgia involved in watching West Side Story. It’s unavoidable. It’s a 60-year-old stage musical based on a 420-year-old story (Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet) ...
4 What is Christian music? How is it different from music made by Christians? Is it different from church music? And why is it usually quite bad? As a worship leader, these are the sorts of questions I like to bore people to death ...
3 Ben Trovato’s the hilarious misguided misogynist whose Sunday Times column thrilled and amused readers for years. Mark Verbaan is the man behind the persona, and his new book, The Memoirs Of Ben Trovato, suggests there was more to the man in the hat’s ...
2 Airport angst. It’s a thing. Anyone who’s felt annoyed when they’ve had to arrive at a placed composed primarily of tiles and x-ray machines four hours before they’ll be able to leave it ahead of an international flight has suffered from this condition. The bulk of ...
2 Barry Ronge was recently recognised for his work as a writer, critic, columnist and commentator at the Sunday Times Literary Awards. He was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award further honoured by the renaming of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, now the Barry ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL Morecambe / Studio Theatre, Montecasino / Starring Craig Urbani / Directed by Alan Swerdlow The obvious challenge to mounting a show about British comedian and variety star Eric Morcambe is the source material’s vintage (Morecambe and Wise began their partnership in 1941 ...
2 BY BRUCE DENNILL Blonde Poison / Directed by Janna Ramos-Violante / Auto & General Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg This moving one-hander by Gail Louw stars Fiona Ramsay as Stella Goldschlag, a septuagenarian German Jew who, while awaiting the arrival of a journalist interested ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL Other than a cup of what is presumably coffee, Josh Groban makes no concessions to fatigue after a full day’s travel from Los Angeles, via Heathrow, to Johannesburg. His chatty, friendly stage persona is shown to be an extension of his ...
2 There were several moments on the Otter Trail where I looked up and thought: “This is tougher than I thought it would be.” When the pack I was carrying bit into my shoulders and my trail runners just wouldn’t grip on the wet ...
2 More than 50 passes to attend the ACT | UJ Conference, sponsored by the Mzansi Golden Economy, will be made available to creative practitioners from across the country. The fourth edition of the ACT | UJ Conference, entitled #creativeintersections – An Interactive Experience – will ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL Impact No. 1 / Tshwane Dance Theatre, Cape Dance Company and Moving Into Dance Mophatong / Joburg Theatre, Braamfontein, Johannesburg When it is possible to see a full-scale contemporary dance programme on one of South Africa’s major stages, it becomes clearer than ...
2 The photographs are taken from the book South African Artists At Home by Paul Duncan (Struik Lifestyle) and used with the permission of the publisher.
2 By JM SHORNEY Until today, in my sheltered writer’s existence, I had not encountered any reference to the group who call themselves Anonymous. The members don Guy Fawkes masks, which I suppose lends an eerie but historic message, as Guy and his co-conspirators were ...
2 There are two things that annoy me about audiences in South Africa. The first thing is that they consider a local cast to be inferior to an international one. Nowhere close to true! The second is that they don’t support student productions. They need convincing them ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL Phillip Phillips 8 The Script 6.5 The Dome / Johannesburg / 4 February The Script returned to South Africa after a four-year break in which they went from radio-friendly pop lady-pleasers, to really successful radio-friendly pop lady-pleasers with a large fanbase of very dedicated ...
2 Jeremiah Goldswain Most people have little knowledge about an ancestor four generations removed but Ralph Goldswain has come to know his great, great grandfather very well. His edition of Jeremiah’s memoirs – The Chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain, 1820 Settler – has just been published. “It’s thrilling, especially as ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL JT Lawrence’s latest book Why You Were Taken paints the South Africa of 2021 as a difficult place for a person who knows his or her own mind. It’s an invigorating, bracing vision by a very talented storyteller. The creation of a new ...
2 The Tokai Forest Market is making an appeal for help after the devastation of the recent Cape Town fires resulted in the loss of equipment and facilities. Situated in the midst of the fire zone, this market has sadly been one of many ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL Marlene Wasserman, akaDr Eve, has, it appears, been seduced (intellectually, anyway) by the data in her latest book, Cyber Infidelity. She was able to put the book – which is really more of an academic work including saucy case studies – ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL Bohemian Rhapsody / Directed by Alan Swerdlow / Studio, Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg Queen’s greatest single musical legacy, Bohemian Rhapsody – the song – remains at or near the top of annual “Best Songs Of All Time, Ever!” lists. This ...
2 Arriving at a studio to record your own original music is mostly incredibly exciting, but also a little nerve-wracking. Are you properly rehearsed? Will your voice last? Will the sound of a nearby electric gate opening and closing drive you to distraction? Time ...
2 Liz de Jager is a South African author who moved to the UK with her husband in 2000. She now lives in Kent, with her dog Sparrow. Liz ran the My Favourite Books blog until the end of 2012, when she shut it ...
2 By ROB HOFMEYR The Road To En-Dor by EH Jones 6 The Texture Of Shadows by Mandla Langa 8 What About Meera by ZP Dala 6 What Will People Say? by Rehana Rossouw ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL A song is worth a thousand words. Or something. Below is a song I wrote about 2014 – not an easy period – with a demo for free download at the bottom of the page. Enjoy. Comments welcome/hoped for/useful. Centre Stage © Bruce Dennill, ...
2 By BRUCE DENNILL Changing your personal brand from the relative edginess of being in an alternative rock or punk band to joining the ranks of the (again – relatively speaking) “elder statesmen” of rock – Madam G even sounds a little like Leonard Cohen: ...
1 Morwenna Holman is a ‘spirit writer’, which means her novels are dictated to her by spirits, “communing with the departed to write stories of their lives which are lost in the mists of time.” Her first novel, Westerdale, was published in 2013, a story she ...
1 By BRUCE DENNILL Jerm: Comedy Club 6 Zapiro: It’s Code Red 6.5 Stephen Francis & Rico: Send In The Clowns 6 Zapiro & Mike Wills: Democrazy 7.5 Remember when cartoons were funny? Neither do South Africa’s leading satirists, who more than ...
1 By BRUCE DENNILL La La Land / Directed by Damien Chazelle / PG13 La La Land. There’s a clue in the name – this is a fairy tale, not to be taken seriously. It’s incredibly simplistic because it’s a dream placed on a screen, not ...
1 Creating your own world is a blast, let’s not beat around the bush here; it’s like eating a big pie of imagination topped with the chilli sauce of creativity. It’s fun, and the great thing is if it wants to get bigger, you ...
