By BRUCE DENNILL Love Sex Fleas God / Directed by Celia Musikanth / POPArt Theatre, Maboneng, Johannesburg A one-man play based on author Bruce Clark’s memoir of the same name, Love Sex Fleas God tells the tale of…
By BRUCE DENNILL Couplet / Directed by Steven Feinstein / Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg The name of this complex new play refers to just one of the mechanisms used in its creation – the use of…
By BRUCE DENNILL Jervis Pennington: An Extraordinarily Ordinary Life / Studio, Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg A clean-cut pop star in his twenties, Jervis Pennington is now in his early sixties and steps onto stage looking like…
By BRUCE DENNILL The Old Man And The Sea / Directed by Jenine Collocott / Auto & General Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg Contagious Theatre is a pocket-sized theatre company – just three members, but oh, what…
By BRUCE DENNILL RedFest 2017: Helen Of Troyeville & Kate Normington – Live At Parlour Songs / Directed by Lesedi Job & Rowan Bakker (respectively) / Redhill School, Johannesburg The RedFest arts festival is now in its second…
By BRUCE DENNILL Composer, producer and playwright Alice Gillham’s new musical Calling Me Home recently completed its first run – a brief installation at the Joburg Theatre in Braamfontein, where it met with mixed reviews. The piece was initially…
By BRUCE DENNILL Freud’s Last Session / Directed by Alan Swerdlow / Auto & General Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg It’s fantastic to see a piece of theatre that is unashamedly intellectual, focusing for almost its entire…
By BRUCE DENNILL Calling Me Home / Directed by Magdalene Minnaar / Mandela, Joburg Theatre, Braamfontein, Johannesburg Large budget, large scale, large vision … and large risk. Calling Me Home is a new, original South African musical, joining…
By BRUCE DENNILL Mamba Republic / Directed by Dr Mervyn McMurtry / Auto & General Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg John van de Ruit and Ben Voss have been busy since creating a platform for themselves with…
By BRUCE DENNILL Dangled / Starring Rob Van Vuuren / POPArt, Maboneng, Johannesburg People will say; have said; that this is a tough play. And thematically, it is – it’s based on a story called Diary Of A…
By RELIC BLEDNUN The Mystery Of Irma Vep / Directed by Elizma Badenhorst / Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg The Mystery Of Irma Vep is, by design, a ridiculous piece of theatre. It’s written for two actors…
By BRUCE DENNILL Puss In Boots / Directed by Steven Stead / Lyric Theatre, Gold Reef City, Johannesburg For Johannesburg audiences, the pantomime has long been a once-a-year festive season family treat at the Joburg Theatre (and this…
By BRUCE DENNILL The Devil & Billy Markham / Directed by Jenine Collocott / POPArt, Maboneng, Johannesburg Being privy to the development process of a new production (even if unofficially so) is a revealing, exciting and sometimes amusing…
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…
By BRUCE DENNILL In The Heights / Directed by Danielle Bentel & Stefania Du Toit / Hyde Park High School, Johannesburg Many school productions are chosen with at least one eye on the complexity of the piece being…
By BRUCE DENNILL Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert: The Musical / Directed by Simon Phillips / The Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways, Johannesburg Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert remains a very different kettle of queens to most stage musicals. As…
By BRUCE DENNILL The Play That Goes Wrong / Directed by Alan Committie / Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg Created by a couple of then low-key thespians only too familiar with how much could go pear-shaped during…
By BRUCE DENNILL El Blanco: Tales Of The Mariachi / Starring James Cairns / Auto & General Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg There’s an art to making a one-man show really fly. If it is a pure…
By BRUCE DENNILL Live Jukebox / Directed by Kristy Suttner / The Fringe, Joburg Theatre, Braamfontein, Johannesburg Interactive theatre shows are not as common as they once were, with even the likes of the Joburg Follies being distant…
By BRUCE DENNILL From Koe’siestes To Kneidlach / Directed by Megan Furniss / Auto & General Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg Writer-actress Chantel Stanfield tells the true story, on a plain stage with just a trio of…
By BRUCE DENNILL Book Marks / Directed by Allan Kolski Horwitz / AFDA Red Roof Theatre, Milpark, Johannesburg This intimate four-character play is billed as a tragi-comedy, but as it weaves its convoluted way to its conclusion, it…
BY BRUCE DENNILL When Swallows Cry / Directed by Lesedi Job / Laager Theatre, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg Migration is perhaps the international political buzzword (buzz-kill?) of the moment, though its nuances are generally hammered into oblivion by…
BY BRUCE DENNILL The House Of Truth / Directed by Vanessa Cooke / Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg The Market Theatre hosted a play, Crepuscule, about Drum magazine journalist and short story writer Can Themba, in…
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…
By BRUCE DENNILL Sherlock Holmes And The Curse Of The Queen’s Diamond / Directed by Alan Swerdlow / Studio Theatre, Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg Some folks may feel a tad Sherlock Holmesed out. Between Robert Downey…
By BRUCE DENNILL Cirque Éloize: ID / Directed by Jeannot Painchaud / Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways, vrc Johannesburg Montreal’s Cirque Éloize is all about energy, movement and reaction to rhythm, and for ID, all of these facets are concentrated…
By BRUCE DENNILL Pay Back The Curry / Directed by Rob Van Vuuren / Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg Satirical revues, especially those that deal in the clichés of whatever agenda is currently being pushed in newscasts,…
By BRUCE DENNILL Blue Man Group was founded by three close friends Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton in New York in 1991. Since the group’s inception it has grown to include permanent shows in Las Vegas, New York,…
By BRUCE DENNILL Annie / Directed by Nick Winston / Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways, Johannesburg An enduring favourite can also, quite easily, become a cliché, and with the better-known songs from Annie – Tomorrow and Hard Knock Life in particular…
By BRUCE DENNILL The Dotted Line Showcase / Directed by Neka Da Costa / Redhill Theatre, Morningside, Johannesburg Great stories work in any format because they deal in themes that remain current whenever and in whatever context they…
By BRUCE DENNILL Acceptance / Directed by Simona Mazza / The Fringe, Joburg Theatre, Braamfontein, Johannesburg The subject matter that inspired this original work is heartbreaking, macabre and troublingly revealing. It takes as it’s core theme the 2014…
By BRUCE DENNILL Saturday Night Fever / Directed by Greg Homann / Opera, South African State Theatre, Pretoria As the beginning of a run of shows that will, it is hoped, play an important role in…
By BRUCE DENNILL Mannequin / Directed by Nataniel / Theatre of Marcellus, Emperors Palace, Johannesburg Mannequin, like most of Nataniel’s output, is difficult to classify. Broadly speaking, it combines his skills as a stand-and-deliver spoken-word raconteur and as…
By BRUCE DENNILL Pests / Directed by Fiona Ramsay / POPArt Centre, Maboneng, Johannesburg Watching Pests, it’s difficult to understand what would make the story appeal to playwright Vivienne Franzmann. A tale of two sisters, young women who…
By BRUCE DENNILL I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change / Directed by Elizma Badenhorst / Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg Versions of the men-versus-women, Mars-Venus, defense of the caveman story have filled the pages of literature,…
By BRUCE DENNILL Slava’s Snowshow / Created by Slava Polunin / Teatro, Fourways, Johannesburg Slava’s Snowshow is a wordless, full-length, tragi-comic theatre production. As such, it’s not something that most mainstream audiences have the slightest clue how to…
By BRUCE DENNILL 6 Characters In Search Of An Author / Directed by Sibusiso Mamba / Mannie Manim Theatre, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg It was a strange strategy in 1921, when Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello wrote and first…
By BRUCE DENNILL Disney’s Peter Pan Jr / Directed by Jill Girard and Keith Smith / People’s Theatre, Braamfontein, Johannesburg Versions of this story have been presented on stage for around a century now, so there is no…
By BRUCE DENNILL Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat / Directed by Paul Warwick Griffin / Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg After Act 1 of this compact new production of the more enjoyable, slightly less irreverent of…
By BRUCE DENNILL Suddenly The Storm / Directed by Bobby Heaney / Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg A new play by Paul Slabolepszy should be a reason for fanfare. Even without his near-peerless track record as…
By BRUCE DENNILL Shape / Directed by Greg Homann / Auto & General Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg The tagline for this new original work is, “A comedy of vanity, sex and race” – three things that…
By BRUCE DENNILL Tobacco, And The Harmful Effects Thereof / Directed by Sylvaine Strike / Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg Given that it’s based on a Chekhov play (by way of William Harding’s adaptation), it’s not…
By BRUCE DENNILL Bye Bye Baby / Musical director: Marc Ryzer / The Mandela, Joburg Theatre, Braamfontein Frankie Valli & The 4 Seasons are a more or less impossible act to follow. There’s Valli’s voice, which is unique…
By BRUCE DENNILL Queen: It’s A Kinda Magic / Starring Giles Taylor / Mandela, Joburg Theatre, Braamfontein, Johannesburg The stated aim of Queen: It’s A Kinda Magic is to be “ the theatrical creation of the very best…
By BRUCE DENNILL Just Carry On William! / Directed by Alan Swerdlow / The Studio, Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg On paper, the idea of bringing together Richmal Crompton’s Just William stories – about a bright, mischievous…
By BRUCE DENNILL The below music, literature, film, TV and theatre may not have been created or originally released during 2015, but it was only at some point during this year that I was able to see it, hear…
By BRUCE DENNILL I’m Playing Your Song: The Marvin Hamlisch Story / Directed by Alan Swerdlow / Pieter Torien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg There’s a regular conversation about South African theatre that focuses on the…
By BRUCE DENNILL The Imperial Ice Stars: Swan Lake On Ice / Directed by Tony Mercer / Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways Broadly speaking, there are two superficial perspectives that arise when classical works are re-imagined to be performed on…
By BRUCE DENNILL Madame Zingara’s The Celebration / Directed by Richard Griffin / Montecasino, Fourways, Johannesburg The Madame Zingara concept is now 15 years old – it’s refreshed with new acts, angles and ideas on a regular basis…
By BRUCE DENNILL Making Mandela: The Boy Who Defined A Future / Directed by Jenine Collocott / Auto & General Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg Any vaguely well-read South African will likely admit that they’re a touch…
By BRUCE DENNILL Before this year’s Naledi Awards, there was a Facebook kerfuffle about the nominations, and during and after the show, there was more of the same sort of chatter – verbally, this time – in the Lyric…
Filming the black comedy Birdman for director Alejandro González Iñárritu was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of Michael Keaton’s career. Keaton is Riggan Thomson an actor who once starred as Birdman, a comic book superhero, which brought…
By SIBUSISO MKWANAZI One of the joys of living in Gauteng is the wide array of activities that are on offer for families. And by this, I mean the kids are taken care of – any parent worth their…
By BRUCE DENNILL Peter Pan: The Pantomime / Joburg Theatre / Directed by Janice Honeyman JM Barrie wouldn’t have a clue what was going on at if he were to walk into the Joburg Theatre during the 2014…
By BRUCE DENNILL The title of this celebration of a quarter of a century of Cape Town theatre provides an encouraging start – a statement of intent in an industry in which it’s impossible to guarantee success and very…