Theatre pick of the week
Defending the Caveman: Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre. July 31 to August 19
“Man fucks woman — subject, verb, object,” quoth Betty Friedan famously in the Sixties, adding further grist to one of the most enduringly busy mills the human species has ever set in motion — the battle of the sexes.
From club-wielding Cro-Magnon men to horse-trodden suffragettes; from the furnace of feminism to Iron John’s attempt to forge a new man, the clash of the chromosomes continues to hold humans enthralled, foster a profit-rich pseudo-industry and eternally evade resolution.
Whether men come from Mars or Mamelodi and women from Venus or Welkom, it is a subject that is not easily understood and this accounts for the endless fascination it engenders — a property reflected in the perennially popular theatrical take on the issue, Defending the Caveman. The wry comedy centred on the male/female divide returns to Durban for the umpteenth time to beguile audiences at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre.
The captivating one-hander, written by Rob Becker, performed by Tim Plewman, directed by Rex Garner and produced by Pieter Toerien, treads familiar gender-conflict ground, yet touches the sexual-identity nerves in fresh and amusing style, astutely relating the eternal man vs woman debate to contemporary issues.
Plewman, anxious to defend the beleaguered modern male, advances the theory that him-her relations are thwarted by both sexes’ refusal to acknowledge the fact that the female gatherer is an entirely different species to the male hunter.
Since this subject is never closed it will be lots of fun and provide sure-fire après-play conversation fodder.
Early booking for Defending the Caveman is recommended because the show usually sells out fast. Tickets are available at Computicket. — Alex Sudheim
Art pick of the week
lend Democratic Gallery: Until August 4
A recent fine-art graduate from Technikon Natal, where she specialised in photography and art theory, Michelle Barrell is exhibiting a selection of her evocative images in the intimate Democratic Gallery at the Bat Centre.
The dense, charged space of this gallery is a highly appropriate site for Barrell’s show, entitled Blend, for it is preoccupied with the starker side of the human reproductive cycle of impregnation, gestation and birth.
The claustrophic beauty of her multilayered photographic images reflects Barrell’s interest in the “brutal reality” of pregnancy, wherein having a bun in the oven is not only the wondrous miracle of nature it is made out to be, but also results in the loss of ownership of one’s own body, a harrowing concept for many women.
“I want to raise awareness among men and women that its not all pink-and-blue happiness,” says Barrell. “From the moment she falls pregnant to the moment she gives birth a woman basically stares down a toilet bowl.”
Another aspect of the concept of ownership that intrigues Barrell is that which society extends over the unborn baby. In the profound image of a woman folded inside a seed, she evinces her convictions that “before the baby is even born — especially in the case of women — its future is already marked out. Before birth the baby girl will most often already carry the seed for the next generation and, even at birth, she will already have her ‘social responsibility’ defined without her consent,” she says. — Alex Sudheim
Gig of the week
Angela Gilbert: Howard College Theatre. August 3
Widely tipped to become South Africa’s next sensation on the world opera stage is young Cape Town-born soprano Angela Gilbert, who is engaged at the renowned Metropolitan Opera in New York. She is a participant in the Met’s prestigous Lindeman Programme for young singers, which every three years inducts only 10 artistes from around the world for its advanced performance and training programme.
Gilbert, a University of Cape Town graduate and a star performer with Artscape, recently appeared in a highly successful concert performance of Donizetti’s grand opera La Favorita at New York’s Carnegie Hall, where she sang opposite internationally acclaimed mezzo soprano Jennifer Larmore. Gilbert also enjoyed phenomenal success in a Young Artists gala concert conducted by James Levine in the 4 000-seat Metropolitan Opera House, during which she performed the sophisticated and specatular coloratura showpiece Glitter and be Gay from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.
Durban opera buffs are afforded a unique opportunity to hear this rising star on the world stage perform when Gilbert gives a one-off recital at the University of Natal’s Howard College Theatre on Friday August 3 at 7.30 pm. Presented by Music Revival, she appears with distinguished South African concert pianist Christopher Duigan in a programme that includes arias from Puccini’s La Rondine, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Alcina. Duigan complements the singer’s musical bill with a performance of a rarely heard piano suite by Percy Grainger of music from Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and Handel’s magnificent Chaconne in G Major.
Tickets for this musical event are R45, which includes a complimentary glass of wine. Tickets are available at the door, or can be reserve by e-mail at [email protected] — Alex Sudheim