A fascinating project resurrects a children’s opera from the Holocaust, and Fiona Coyne’s last play has its debut.
? Sixty-eight years after the children’s opera Brundibár (Bumble Bee) was first performed during the Holocaust, it will be staged in South Africa in tandem with a Magnet Theatre play, The Children and the Bees. There will be an accompanying exhibition of children’s art from the Terezín ghetto. It is the tale of two children who need money to buy milk for their sick mother. Their quest is thwarted by an evil organ-grinder named Brundibár. But with the help of three intelligent animals, the children defeat the bully and return home in triumph. The story was written by Czech composer Hans Krása, based on a Czech folktale, Brundibár, and performed 55 times in the Nazi-created ghetto of Terezín.
Main Theatre, Artscape Theatre Centre, Foreshore, from July 18 to 21. Book at Computicket. Tel: 021 421 7695. Website: www.thebrundibarproject.co.za.
? The last play penned by the late Fiona Coyne, Careful, is a light comedy, at times somewhat blithe but also witty, intelligent, touching and beautifully structured. Self-referential, often self-deprecating, it is above all intrinsically theatrical, using such devices as opening with a play within a play. The script, we learn, is a vehicle to resuscitate the Baxter’s career, flagging in the new South Africa where ‘straight” drama is on the wane, especially if you’re a white classical actress with a Royal Academy of Dramatic Art accent. There is delicious irony in the fact that this play is exactly what it purports to be about, with the part so often playing the actor.
Arena Theatre, Artscape Theatre Centre, Foreshore, until July 30. Book at Computicket. Tel: 021 421 7695. Website: www.artscape.co.za.
? The latest play, Poisson, by Juliet Jenkin (The Boy Who Fell from the Roof) is a comic modern fable set on a deserted beach in the Eastern Cape. Two estranged sisters (played by Roxanne Blaise and Juliet Jenkin) reunite to meet their father and settle a few scores before the tide comes in. Poisson is an allegory, with a twist in the tale and the telling of it ‘with social messages craftily interwoven into the story”. Poisson is directed by Christiaan Olwagen, who won the Fleur du Cap Award for New Director earlier this year for his production of Woza Andries in 2010.
Golden Arrow Studio, Baxter Theatre, Main Road, until July 30. Book at Computicket. Tel: 021 685 7880. Website: www.baxter.co.za.