/ 10 September 2010

Cape Town theatre picks: September 10 2010

Cape Town offers both comedy and social commentary this week.

  • The Drama for Life Festival, a unique cross-community HIV and AIDS arts education, activist and therapeutic intervention, arrives in Cape Town from Johannesburg, before continuing on to Pietermarizburg and Durban. Through the performing and visual arts, the festival promotes a world of love, compassion and mutual respect, a world free from fear, discrimination and prejudice. This year’s theme title, Sex Actually, focuses on renewed efforts in finding creative and sustainable ways of learning and building capacity in HIV and AIDS education and prevention. The programme includes works by Peter Hayes, PJ Sabbagha, Bonfire Theatre, Ubom!, Siwela Sonke, The Cape Academy of Performing Arts and Clowns Without Borders.

    The Little Theatre, UCT Hiddingh Campus, Orange Street, Gardens on September 10 and 11. Tel: 021 480 7129. Website: www.dramaforlife.co.za

  • Molly Bloom is a character taken from James Joyce’s landmark novel Ulysses. Nicky Rebelo has adapted the famous stream of consciousness monologue often referred to as Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. It is the 18th, and final, unpunctuated chapter of the novel which, if performed uncut, would run for over four hours. The stage version (100 minutes), a one-woman monologue performed by Jennifer Steyn, remains true to Joyce’s original text and intention and has not sacrificed its poetry, cyclical structure and erotic bawdiness. What we get are Molly’s thoughts as she lies in bed next to her cuckolded and sleeping husband, Leopold Bloom. She muses about life, love, death, her past and sex. Real-life husband-and-wife theatre couple Jennifer Steyn and Nicky Rebelo have collaborated on several theatre projects in the past. Joyce’s novel, published in Paris in 1922, was immediately banned in the USA and Britain.

    Golden Arrow Studio, Baxter Theatre, Main Road, Rondebosch, from September 14 to October 9. Tel: 021 685 7880. Book at Computicket. Website: www.baxter.co.za

    Inbox
    X

    Reply
    |
    Brent Meersman
    to Matthew, percyz, listings, Lisa, me

    show details Sep 6 (4 days ago)

    FESTIVAL

    The Drama for Life Festival, a unique cross-community HIV and AIDS arts education, activist and therapeutic intervention, arrives in Cape Town from Johannesburg, before continuing on to Pietermarizburg and Durban. Through the performing and visual arts, the festival promotes a world of love, compassion and mutual respect, a world free from fear, discrimination and prejudice. This year’s theme title, Sex Actually, focuses on renewed efforts in finding creative and sustainable ways of learning and building capacity in HIV and AIDS education and prevention. The programme includes works by Peter Hayes, PJ Sabbagha, Bonfire Theatre, Ubom!, Siwela Sonke, The Cape Academy of Performing Arts and Clowns Without Borders.

    >> The Little Theatre, UCT Hiddingh Campus, Orange Street, Gardens on September 10 and 11. Tel: 021 480 7129. Website: www.dramaforlife.co.za

    THEATRE

    Molly Bloom is a character taken from James Joyce’s landmark novel Ulysses. Nicky Rebelo has adapted the famous stream of consciousness monologue often referred to as Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. It is the 18th, and final, unpunctuated chapter of the novel which, if performed uncut, would run for over four hours. The stage version (100 minutes), a one-woman monologue performed by Jennifer Steyn, remains true to Joyce’s original text and intention and has not sacrificed its poetry, cyclical structure and erotic bawdiness. What we get are Molly’s thoughts as she lies in bed next to her cuckolded and sleeping husband, Leopold Bloom. She muses about life, love, death, her past and sex. Real-life husband-and-wife theatre couple Jennifer Steyn and Nicky Rebelo have collaborated on several theatre projects in the past. Joyce’s novel, published in Paris in 1922, was immediately banned in the USA and Britain.

    >>Golden Arrow Studio, Baxter Theatre, Main Road, Rondebosch, from September 14 to October 9. Tel: 021 685 7880. Book at Computicket. Website: www.baxter.co.za

    COMEDY

    Porralicious is the third incarnation and is apparently the concluding chapter (the first debuted in Cape Town in 2004) of Sonia Esgueira’s popular comedy about the Portuguese community in South Africa, tracing their history in this country including present day trials such as café robberies. Esgueira’s host of characters, the five family members including the heroine Paula and her mucho brother Rui, are something of a cult. This time she is under the direction of Heinrich Reisenhofer.

    The family faces disaster and Granny Maria Ferreira, an unlikely hero, is bestowed with a secret that could save a generation. Much of the humour is in the ‘and you thought your family was embarrassing” vein. Esgueira takes as her theme romantic comedy. It’s billed as a misguided, whirlwind adventure of love, loss and emigration. Hair jokes and deliberately bad soccer jokes however are still in.

    Opens September 15, until October 2 at the Theatre on the Bay, 1A Link Street, Camps Bay. Book at Computicket. Tel: 021 438 3301. Website: www.theatreonthebay.co.za