Cape theatre picks: April 15 2011

Opera and musical theatre is on the bill this week.

• Arriving straight from the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees is the Afrikaans drama My Naam Is Ellen Pakkies based on the true story of an ordinary woman from Lavender Hill on the outskirts of Cape Town who was driven to murder her tik-addicted child. It was a story that made headlines around the world. Vinette Ebrahim (Charmaine in the TV series Sewende Laan) plays Ellen Pakkies and Christo Davids (Errol in Sewende Laan) is Abie, her son. As a result of the extenuating circumstances Pakkies received a suspended sentence. The text is by Lizz Meiring.
  
  Until May 7 in the Golden Arrow Studio, Baxter Theatre, Main Road, Rosebank. Book at Computicket. Tel: 021 685 7880. Website: www.baxter.co.za

• What’s in a Name? is a new musical comedy cabaret devised and performed by young talents Delray Burns and Roland Perold, whose I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change recently ran at the Kalk Bay Theatre. It’s a light-heartened look at the nature of names with a healthy dose of comedy and songs such as Mrs. Worthington, Maria and Dammit Janet. The audience is promised an “inside scoop” as to how Otto Tit-sling and Philippe De-Brassiere fought it out to create the world’s first ‘over the shoulder bolder holder”. Perold first performed the show as a solo act, but decided to develop it as a two-hander. It is directed by Garth Tavares and choreographed by Burns.

  Until April 30 at the Kalk Bay Theatre, 52 Main Road, Kalk Bay. Book at: Tel: 073 220 5430. Website: www.kbt.co.za

• Cape Town Opera present a double bill of two Puccini one act operas, taken from his II Trittico, in invigorating new interpretations by young South African directors Matthew Wild and Sandile Kamle. Suor Angelica, Puccini’s personal favourite of his triptych of one-act operas, tells the sentimental story of a cloistered nun who was forced into a convent by her noble family after having a child out of wedlock. The opera has some of Puccini’s most heart-rending music, including Angelica’s devastating aria ‘Senza mamma”. It is followed by the riotously farcical Gianni Schicchi, in which a wily trickster outwits greedy relatives determined to rewrite a deceased man’s will. It features probably Puccini’s most famous soprano aria, ‘O mio babbino caro”. Albert Horne conducts.

  From April 16 to 21 at the Main Theatre, Artscape Theatre Centre, Foreshore, Cape Town. Book at Computicket. Tel: 021 421 7695. Website: www.artscape.co.za