It came from the deep, or the dark… I don’t know – but it eventually came once Jason Zeeman had warmed up the chilly Joburg …
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7 Bracing For Big Wreck, Or Thorn(le)y Issues Discussed
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 ...
6 Before We Disappear: Chris Cornell – In Memoriam
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 ...
4 If Barry Is Ronge I Don’t Want To Be Right
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 ...
4 15 Years On: Secular Versus Spiritual, Or Reasons To Get Delirious?
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 ...
4 Somewhere, Somehow, They’ve Made A New Kind Of Theatre
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) ...
3 Excerpt from Incognito: The Memoirs Of Ben Trovato by Mark Verbaan
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 Right Royal Rumpus, Or The Art Of Good Writing
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 Trail Mix
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 All That Glitters Is Not Gold, Or Hey Jude, You’re Making It Worse
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 Collected Choreography, Or Three-Sway Alliance
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 New Mission, Same Mind, Or Wayne Hussey Gets It Together, Alone
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: ...
2 Morecambe, Not Less, Or An Urban(i) Legend In The Making
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 What Will People Say About Meera On The Shadow Road?
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 Music Review: John Ellis – Tells
By BRUCE DENNILL “Tells” – in the poker sense – is an interesting word to use as a title for an artist whose utterances are often misunderstood or wilfully misconstrued. And what’s even more curious is that much of this music was written a ...
2 Future Fuschia, Or Corporate Control Corrected
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 Music Interview – Glen Phillips: Appetite For Empathy, Or A Fillip For Integrity
By BRUCE DENNILL Glen Phillips, once and occasionally present Toad The Wet Sprocket frontman, has released a poetic, honest new solo album called Swallowed By The New, on which he examines heartbreak, depression, grief and, ultimately, hope. You’ve talked about – as part of the processing ...
2 A Memoir Revisited: Jeremiah Goldswain Brought Back To Life
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 Exit Strategy: Tracking Session One (1 February)
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 Changing The Script, Or Phillip Phillips Gives Concert A Fillip
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 How To Remain Anonymous, Or Covert In Glory
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 Show (And Tell) Tunes, Or Getting Better In Stages
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 Lie Fidelity, Or On The (Dr) Eve Of Something New
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 Sensational Students, Or There’s No Good Friday For Carrie, The Musical
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 New Song: Centre Stage, Or My Year In A 4:05 Demo
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 Alleviating Airport Angst, Or A Sacrifice This Side Of Security
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 ...
1 Interior Observations, Or Engrossed By A Forgotten Heritage
By ROB HOFMEYR Hazel Crampton: The Side Of The Sun At Noon Hazel Crampton is known for her outstanding The Sunburnt Queen, an account of a little English girl shipwrecked on the Wild Coast. This new work has a greater scope both historically and geographically, but ...
1 Dieter Daehnke: Journey Of A Stickman, or ExSpain Yourself
By BRUCE DENNILL Dieter Daehnke: Journey Of A Stickman All books are about journeys, one way or another. Dieter Daehnke’s recollections of his experiences on the Camino – the pilgrim’s trek from various points in Europe to the giant cathedral in Santiago de Compostela that supposedly ...
1 Steven Boykey Sidley: Imperfect Solo
The trick Steven Boykey Sidley got right in his first book, Entanglement, and has continued to refine via second release Stepping Out and through to this third effort, is to make small dramas feel extravagantly exciting and involving. All of his books involve men ...
1 Slave To The Rhythm, Or Walkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution
By BRUCE DENNILL A Spartacus Of Africa / Choreographed by Veronica Paeper and David Krugel / Joburg Theatre, Johannesburg The story of the Thracian – Thrace was an area overlapping parts of modern Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece – slave, gladiator and revolutionary Spartacus, re-imagined as ...
1 For Crying Out Loud, Or What It Means To Be A Man
By TAMMY BALLANTYNE Dance Umbrella 2015 Double bill: The Architecture of Tears and fight, flight, feathers, f***ers March 3 and 4, Dance Factory Images of flight, buoyancy, human bodies airborne, pervaded this double bill at Dance Factory. During Dance Umbrella, we accept that it’s a platform for ...