Now that the National Arts Festival is over, theatre goers can expect some of the highlights from Grahamstown to be headed their way.
? Last year Ariel Dorfman, during a visit to South Africa to deliver the eighth Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, attended a performed reading of his play, Purgatorio, at the Baxter Theatre. Dorfman places a man and a woman in a kind of purgatory — a stark and soulless waiting room. As the drama unfolds, it emerges that they are each other’s interrogator, searching for clemency and contrition. Their fates are bound together by a horrific past, and freedom depends on their willingness to sacrifice themselves, each for the other. Director Clare Stopford’s production of the play is inspired by the myth of Jason and Medea and brings together actors Dawid Minnaar and Terry Norton.
Baxter Flipside, Baxter Theatre, Rosebank, until July 30. Book at Computicket. Tel: 021 685 7880. Website: www.baxter.co.za.
? Alan Bennett’s internationally acclaimed drama, The History Boys, is set in a northern England high school in the 1980s and chronicles the final school year of eight clever, mostly working-class pupils in their pursuit of sex and sport and as they prepare for the entrance exams that will determine whether they will gain admission to the elite worlds of Oxford and Cambridge. Two teachers become rivals for the hearts and minds of the boys in this hilarious and provocative play that explores the anarchy of adolescence and the politics of education. Bennett’s script is packed with superb one-liners and arguments about how we interpret history, the role of social class and politics, and examines what an education really is.
Theatre on the Bay, 1A Link Street, Camps Bay, from July 12 to August 6. Book at Computicket. Tel: 021 438 3301. Website: www.theatreonthebay.co.za.