[Equipment for Living] An excuse to perform Schubert or an exploration of our Post-Trump age? Unstuck Opera’s newest work, The Winterreise Project, pits the subjects of Franz Schubert’s grim song cycle against the backdrop of the Trump presidency. In searching for connections between the two, director and performer Frances Moore presents the show to us as a form of personal […]
[A Ghost Story] Written and directed by Stanley Makuwe, Finding Temeraire is an extremely dark and disturbing look at the debris of a relationship, but its most incisive critique is left unsaid. The play is a two-hander about Primrose (Sandra Zvenyika), who returns home after a long prison sentence for killing her child, intent on confronting the man, Temeraire (Tawanda […]
[Everything is Surrounded by Storytelling] This week Uther Dean performs two of his solo shows at The Basement. Written by Uther Dean and Hannah Banks, and performed and directed by the former and latter respectively, Everything is Surrounded by Water is a journey of quarter-life crisis soul-searching. Fortunately, Dean has an acute awareness of and philosophical regard to the content of his […]
[Madonna/Whore] Wrapped in cloth gauze, a modified hijab of virginal white, Ella Gilbert plummets around the stage in bold and often uncomfortable movements. Imagine an alien shapeshifter forced to become a woman on Planet Earth, to operate under the complex and contradictory behaviours of femaleness. That’s what Gilbert embodies here. A body horror of female sex at war with itself; […]
[Perfectly Pitched] We’re greeted at the door by the star of the show, Laura Corcoran aka Miss Frisky. She even compliments me on my hat and so I return the compliment, to which she says “you’re too kind!”. That’s the extent of my interaction with her throughout the show. But that doesn’t matter…there’s minimal hauling up on stage so we’re […]
[Fun Appetiser] Aunty, a solo show by Johanna Cosgrove, feels more like a party than a show. It is the foundation of its success, and a symptom of a fundamental flaw. But first, the good stuff. At the centre of the festivities is Aunty, an obnoxious, self-absorbed but loving woman, who has managed to pull her entire extended family (the […]
[Beauty and the Sea Monster] There’s something beautiful about an actor returning to direct a pivotal play in their career, coming full circle and all that. While I can’t speak for the quality of Sara Wiseman’s performance in Silo’s 2004 production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, she brings a deep understanding to the characters in her directorial debut […]
[‘There used to be a graying tower alone on the sea…’] A meditation on the concept of interconnectedness? Or an unintentional send-up of artistic ego? Created by Arlo Gibson and Ash Jones, Non Flower Elements is a wonderful mess, a mix of audience participation, musical, monologue and jacked naked men. The show feels like a brainstorm, a bunch of ideas and set […]
[Super Gold (card)] When I think of white South Africans, a couple things come to mind: Apartheid, the Springboks, the religious psychos who used to live up the street and, of course, the bad guys in Lethal Weapon 2. It says something that The South Afreakins managed to win me over. To cut to the chase, this show is great. Written and […]
[Wonder Dogs] Old Tricks New Dogs successfully and fully explores its theme of dogginess through movement, sound, props, personalities and proximities. This non-narrative dance-theatre work follows a thread rather than a storyline, but nevertheless feels complete. The performance begins while the audience is still milling around at the bar; a hi-vis performer with a whistle shepherds us upstairs and into […]
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