How the trainers are faring this racing season
Tarry four-timer inches him closer to pacemaker Snaith.
When trainer Sean Tarry cooly collected four feature winners on Saturday, racing fans weren't particularly surprised.
The man from Randjesfontein always targets major meetings, with their lucrative races, and The Championships Finale at Turffontein – the climax of the Highveld autumn season in his backyard – was just the ticket.
As he collected trophy after trophy at the Big T, Tarry confirmed his big-day love affair: 'We always give it a go. We aim for the stars … if it comes off that's great … but we are never greedy.'
It took just over 30 minutes for the Tarry team to reach some of those stars, with both the TAB Pretty Polly Stakes and the TAB Protea Stakes in the bag (both Grade 3 races for juveniles). A couple of hours later, two Grade 2s had been added – the Camellia Stakes and the Colorado King Stakes – courtesy of fillies Mia Moo and Let's Go Now.
This is also the time of year when Tarry shifts gears, revving up the KwaZulu-Natal winter term, which climaxes South Africa's official season.
Indeed, in recent seasons the former champion trainer has put in flying finishes during May, June and July to almost overhaul prevailing top dog Justin Snaith on the prizemoney log that decides the championship.
This year we are unlikely to see another Tarry-Snaith cliffhanger as the latter already has a very commanding lead and carries awesome firepower in his KZN raiding party.
This week's arrival of the East Coast's three-month festival is a good time to reflect on the state of play among the country's top trainers.
Stakes money won
Cape Town-based Snaith, who dominated his hometown summer, already has R21.4-million in stakes money won.
Tarry's Saturday haul pushed his total up to R11.3-million – level with Eastern Cape supremo Alan Greeff, who annually runs up an impressive number early on before being swamped by the 'big guns' as the season rushes to its end.
In nominal fourth spot is the newly formed father-son combo of Brett and James Crawford, with their tally of R9.7-million being made up of Brett's winnings from when horses raced under his name alone, added to the aggregate they've achieved as an official unit.
Joburg's Tony Peter and Alec Laird are level-pegging on R8.9-million, just ahead of Cape Town's Candice Bass-Robinson on R8.5-million.
Another father-son team has a joint tally of R8.5-million: Mike and Mathew de Kock.
KZN has a pile of money waiting to be won in dozens of elite races, and upsets are always a factor as the great puzzle works itself out.
No one race will decide the final numbers, but it's interesting to glance at the list of trainers of the top 10 horses in the betting for the showpiece, the Hollywoodbets Durban July.
In order of favouritism, they are: Snaith, the Crawfords, Tarry, Laird, Joe Soma, Natie Kotzen, Snaith, the De Kocks, Michael Roberts and Lucky Houdalakis.
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Mail & Guardian
5 days ago
- Mail & Guardian
Noxolo Dlamini returns to the stage as Sarafina
Third time lucky: Noxolo Dlamini returns to the role of Sarafina in a production of the musical, on at the Joburg Theatre until 15 June. (Photo supplied) For Noxolo Dlamini, acting isn't merely a job — it is spiritual. It's a channel that allows her to connect with people through their spirit. I can immediately sense the passion she has for the vocation when she speaks. For her, the art of acting is one that enables her to portray characters that stand up for others and seek social justice. Her portrayal of Sarafina is no exception. She has returned to theatre to reprise her role in the critically acclaimed musical by late South African playwright Mbongeni Ngema. The opening night of Sarafina took place on 30 May at the Joburg Theatre and it will run until 15 June. The award-winning actress recounts how acting was a big part of her childhood, long before she stepped onto the stage and screen. 'I've always acted,' she says. 'I started in nursery school. The earliest memory or story I've heard from my mother is that there was a show that we did. I was like five, six. We did the Down in the Jungle song and I got to play the mama. 'And I remember my mom saying that my teacher at the time went up to her after the performance and said, 'I don't know if you know this, but Nox is really good at this thing, you know. She seems to really enjoy it too.' And my mom was like, 'Oh, okay. Well that's really nice.' 'And so my mom always reminds me of that story and I think that's when she first realised. 'But, for me, I used to love playing in the mirror. I used to dance, sing and act in front of the mirror. It's just something I really liked. I just enjoyed it. I got to primary school and that's all I did.' During her time at Craighall Primary School in Johannesburg, Dlamini had a drama teacher, Mrs Martel, who would later on put in a word to convince her mom to allow her to pursue her love of acting. 'When I got to grade seven, she's the one that spoke to my mother about the National School of the Arts and she's, like, 'I think she should go there because she clearly loves it and she's good at it.' 'So then I went to the National School of the Arts. She really fought for me, you know, and my mom was very supportive. 'It was really lovely because my mom's a single mom of five and I think she appreciated the help of someone else spotting my talent and actually pushing for me to, I guess, go for what I really love.' Dlamini was cast as Sarafina in 2017 and again in 2019. After that, she took a break from theatre to focus on film and television projects. Photo supplied 'I've always done theatre. My career studying-wise was always theatre. Film and television wasn't the thing I was actually planning on doing until 2018. 'The idea started playing in my head in 2017, but in 2018, I made the decision that, in 2019, I'm not auditioning for theatre anymore.' It was during this break from theatre that she won a South African Film and Television Award in 2023 for the best actress in a feature film category for her performance in Netflix's Silverton Siege. The actress recently starred in Amazon Prime's action film G20, inspired by the G20 meeting set to take place in South Africa in November. It stars Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award-winning American actress Viola Davis as 'Potus', the president of the US, and New Zealand actor Antony Starr as Rutledge, the villain. 'When I got G20, I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I actually get to work with her [Davis]!' Dlamini remembers. 'You know, the first time I worked with her briefly on The Woman King, doing stunts, but now I actually have a scene with her.' What makes the movie an exciting watch, for South Africans anyway, is spotting the local accents of several of the characters. Dlamini plays Lesedi, a South African government agent posing as a hotel staff member. 'Lesedi is a badass. I think what's lovely about her is that she's such a powerful representation of what a South African woman is — in an action sense, of course. 'But I think my favourite thing is how we were allowed to firstly play ourselves — South Africans — but also, that we were allowed to be a part of the heroes.' 'Lesedi, I think this is like with any soldier — she lends herself … to protect others, to help others. 'I did learn from her that there's nothing wrong with lending yourself, ' Dlamini says. Recently, before the announcement of her return as Sarafina, she spoke about the theatre itch she hadn't been able to quite shake off. 'Like, right now, I'm definitely going back to theatre. There's something in my heart that feels like it needs to happen. 'And, instead of feeling like I'm angry or like I'm tired of filming television, I realised I need to go back into theatre again. I need to fuel up. 'I need to inject myself with that love and that creativity and just give all of that again, to get back to going, 'Okay, okay, okay, fine, I'm okay.' I just needed a dose of that. 'But, yeah, I think I shouldn't leave it for too long, actually. 'I miss the adrenaline. I love the rehearsal space. I love rehearsal time. I love finding the character. 'I love getting to do the same show five times, six times in the week where you can literally have a different show every night because things happen differently. I just miss that.' Some might call it fate that the actress has been cast as Sarafina three times. After all, Dlamini's love for the character began when she watched the 1992 film adaptation of the musical starring South African actress Leleti Khumalo and American actress Whoopi Goldberg. The movie is what finally inspired her to become an actress. 'The earliest I can remember, because I'm thinking of the cassettes we used to watch, we used to have Sarafina. I loved Sarafina. I loved it because it incorporated everything I enjoy. It had the acting, the dancing, the singing and I was just like, 'Yoh!' 'You know what it feels like to me, it feels like … I don't know how to explain it. I think musical theatre people, people who do theatre, will understand the feeling of, like, after doing a huge number on stage and it's at the end. Just that feeling, that exhilarating feeling. That's how it makes me feel. 'And that makes me feel alive. And it makes me feel like I just did everything in the world, you know?' Noxolo Dlamini. (Photo supplied) Sarafina showcases a pivotal moment in South Africa's history when students led protests during the 1976 Soweto Uprising. The characters depict the violent trauma that many students experienced under the apartheid regime. It is for this reason it is crucial for actors to be able to step back from a role. 'We use ourselves. We are the vessel that the character is coming alive through. And some people use their own past experiences to reach certain things. To be a human being and to put yourself through something that isn't actually happening, you know it, but your body and your mind don't really,' Dlamini says. 'That's why they're always talking about de-roling. And it's because your body actually goes through it. The trauma of the character, your body goes through it too.' She says an actor's mind does it too: 'Oh, by the way, just so you know, this is not real, you know, because you're using your actual emotions and you're using your actual self. 'It's really important to understand how you get in and out of that. How to get to a point where you go, 'Okay, the character's done. Now we have Nox. How do we get back to Nox? What does Nox like?' 'It's really important to have that relationship with yourself so that you're able to kind of lend yourself out to your characters.' The actress says she has reached a milestone in her career — and has no plans to slow down. 'My career has been so blessed. I've just reached the 10-year point. I was starting to kind of feel like it's slowing down and I'm just like, 'Ah, do I still want to do this?' ''Of course I want to do this, but what do I want to do? There's something else. There's something else that's meant to happen.' 'I don't know what it is right now. And I love that feeling because it's brought me closer to God again. Because, initially, the reason I wanted to do it was because I believe it is what God gave me. He put that dream in my heart. I can't give up on myself because I feel like giving up on myself is giving up on God.' Dlamini's focus at the moment is on returning to the stage and making her mark once again. 'I think, more than anything, I love what I do because I get to express myself. It's that one feeling of being on stage and going, 'Huh!' And, 'I gave everything that I could.' 'And also, the energy! There's so much energy in what you get from the audience, what you give to the audience. And it's just … it's beautiful to be in the space where we're all telling a story. 'The energies are so different because every show feels so different. 'I get to go home and sleep. And then the next morning, I get to wake up and do it again.'
Mail & Guardian
03-06-2025
- Mail & Guardian
Bitter Winter: the show will go on but what of the people in it?
In from the cold: A scene from Bitter Winter, Paul Slabolepszy's new play, which is on at the Baxter in Cape Town. Photos: RegardsVisser A new play by the masterful Paul Slabolepszy is always a cultural event. His latest is in many ways a form of meta-theatre, conveying a deep sense of the tragedy that awaits this country's artists at the tail end of life. But it is also a story of hope for the future. The trick, of course, is to stretch and expand time. That ability possessed by great writers to use words and dialogue, dramatic conflict and connection to parse open and peer inside those crucial moments between people. A well-made play goes inside and examines the interior landscape of the human soul and lays it out for an audience in ways that are entertaining, gripping and — if you are very lucky — capable of shifting your understanding of life itself. A great play puts human beings under a microscope, letting us under their skins, allowing us to see inside their souls so we get an inkling of what it means to be human. Among the most capable writers practising this sort of literary alchemy is Paul Slabolepszy, a legend of South African stage (and screen), and someone who has consistently placed this country's people under a microscope and taught audiences something about who we are. And, perhaps even more significantly, who we're capable of being. That's what struck me hardest while watching his latest play, a three-hander that debuted in Joburg earlier this year and is showing at the Baxter in Cape Town. It is not merely a dramatisation of an encounter between two very different men, it is in fact a celebration of what ultimately connects them. It is a play about what we share. And it is a play that makes you want to be a better person, to try harder and to work at looking more deeply into the eyes of other humans — especially strangers and presumed enemies. Bitter Winter is directed by Lesedi Job and, between them, a team of fastidious designers (set, lighting and sound are all nuanced and compelling) and three actors, what they've crafted is an instant classic, a humbling show that manages to contain an entire universe of human experience. It is wisdom distilled into something warm and tender, funny and entertaining. It is in some respects a small play, no interval and with most of the dialogue between two actors at opposite ends of their careers, characters who at first glance seem polar opposites, unlikely to ever see eye to eye. But Slabolepszy's triumph is that, like a sculptor, he's able to carve away the superficial exterior and expose the human beings at their core. It is riveting to watch, like a live dissection executed with incredible skill and grace and with great care. He puts beautiful truths and vivid stories into the mouths of the play's two stars, reveals their inner workings in honest, measured, sparkling dialogue, so that, by the end of it, you're genuinely touched, eyes doubtless a little wet. It never skips through time, nor does it use effects or stagey gimmicks. 'Now is the winter of our discontent …': Lesedi Job, the director of Bitter Winter, a three-hander written by Paul Slabolepszy. Photos: Gustav Gerdener It is one space, a casting agency waiting room where the kettle's on the fritz and the flimsy excuse for a coffee station is stocked with the cheap and nasty instant stuff. Plus there's a presumably emotionless clock-watching production assistant-type running around, always talking to actors with her back to them. As it turns out, she's human, too. Somehow, in this world of quick, fast, short sound bites, Slabolepszy puts words, sentences and memories together in ways that make you want to really listen to the stories, the longer the better. And when his words find their way into the mouths of such consummate actors as André Odendaal and Oarabile Ditsele, the result feels urgent, precious and prescient. Odendaal plays Jean-Louis, a much older, wiser and poorer actor who survives by occasionally covering shifts at a corner café and otherwise drawing a stipend from the Theatre Benevolent Fund. He does not even possess a cellphone. Ditsele's Prosper Mangane is, by contrast, a young, streetwise know-it-all, full of intelligence gleaned from a short but tempestuous life, and he comes pre-loaded with unfiltered disdain for old white men. The question of whether his disdain is the result of a specific chip on his shoulder, a characteristic of impatient youth or casual indifference to a stranger who is chewing up the oxygen in the room is part of the play's dramatic unfolding. What unfolds, too, is proof you do not need complicated plots, nor an avalanche of profanities, no overt politics, tales of abuse, nor some horrifying hidden secret to generate something powerful and impactful on stage. You simply need truth, stories with heart and relationships between characters whose underlying conflict is capable of going somewhere. You're set up from the start to assume Jean-Louis is cantankerous and gruff. That he is some badly-dressed fuddy-duddy looking after number one. And it's such assumptions that get knocked down again and again in Bitter Winter, a play that's figuratively about those bitter twilight years of old age but also, more literally, takes place on a cold winter afternoon in downtown Joburg. The audience is also set up to instantly judge and characterise Prosper, played so adorably and effortlessly by Ditsele that you almost assume that, like his character, he's not putting in the work, that perhaps he really is simply slouching around, easing into the role, doing what comes naturally. Which is often the bone older people like Jean-Louis have to pick with young people — they're unwilling to put in the hard slog. They think they know everything and, in some respects, they do. Prosper has quickly ratcheted up fame, has all the indulgent playthings of a get-rich-quick lifestyle, including a warm thermal undershirt in his bag and an Audi with a ding that'll cost a small fortune to fix. The casting agency waiting room says it all, though: the behind-the-scenes reality of an industry that is often associated with glamour and opening-night fanfare. But what we're confronted with here is anything but glitzy; it's downright appalling, not even a thought for a bit of heating to keep actors warm while waiting for some hotshot film director to arrive from the airport where he's just landed, no doubt having flown first class. The traditions Bitter Winter draws on are rich, from the great speeches of Shakespeare to Beckett's absurdist set-up of having two characters endlessly waiting for the arrival of some god-like figure. And there's the familiarity of something known to all of us — being uncomfortably stuck in a room with a stranger. Slabolepszy is such an expert on the human condition, and knows so well how to find the best in people, that he's able to draw his characters not into a punch-up, but into a far more dazzling and purposeful expression of all their inner turmoils, memories, hopes, dreams and hurts. Then there's that moment of mutual recognition, the point at which what we witness on stage is an expression of our shared humanity. Something you notice is that, despite his complaints about the cold and the physical pain he's in, Jean-Louis does not feel especially sorry for himself. To an extent, he has accepted his fate, knows enough about how the narrative plays out to realise how and why his life has taken the turn it has. There's a kind of sadness in that, too, but of course this tragic old thespian has been schooled not only by life but also by the parts he's played. And he's comforted, perhaps, by the knowledge that he still has it in him to act — and to do so with everything in his soul. He proves as much, in fact, in a heart-wrenching scene where, at Prosper's insistence, he performs a speech by Richard III's Duke of Gloucester. As Prosper watches Jean-Louis give the performance of a lifetime you see a switch being turned in the young man's heart. He has never had someone mentor him, never known anyone to take the time to show him what acting can in fact be. It's a profound and stirring moment, one in which theatre becomes a place of healing, a sanctuary where souls meet, a space where reality is shaped into something new. Bitter Winter will be playing at the Baxter Studio in Cape Town until 14 June.
The Citizen
03-06-2025
- The Citizen
Bulls and Sharks could serve up another URC knockout classic
The Sharks have beaten the Bulls twice in the URC this season, but the Highveld side won a thrilling quarterfinal knockout between them in season one. It has all the makings of a United Rugby Championship (URC) classic, as the Bulls are set to host the Sharks in a massive semifinal match-up at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday evening. A crowd of over 50,000 fans is expected at what should be a sold-out match, and will pit the country's two strongest unions against each other for a place in the URC final. The Bulls will be hunting a third final appearance in four seasons, while the Sharks will be hoping to reach the trophy game for the first time, having previously been dumped out at the quarterfinal stage on two occasions. One of them was in the inaugural URC season; an absolute classic of a match that saw the Bulls edge a thrilling 30-27 win thanks to a drop goal from Chris Smith after the fulltime hooter. That game was played while Covid restrictions were still in place, so a boisterous crowd of over 22,000 fans were kept on the edge of their seats throughout a terrific 80-minute contest, that saw the sides level at 13-all at halftime, and 27-all as the clock ticked into the red. A similar contest could be on the cards this weekend, and the in-form Bulls will be favourites, but if any team was to topple them it would be their arch rivals from Durban. The Bulls have only lost four times in 19 URC games this season, but two of those defeats have come against the Sharks, who clinched a tight 20-17 win on the coast, before stunning their rivals with a 29-19 win on the Highveld. Plenty of confidence That will give the visitors plenty of confidence heading into the semis, and after picking up a historic penalty shootout win in their quarterfinal against Munster over the past weekend, which saw 100 minutes of rugby after going to extra time and ending 24-all, they will need everything they can get. Sharks coach John Plumtree admitted that they might amend their training a bit this week due to the extra playing time, but said that was something they would only discuss at training on Monday, after being asked about it in the post-match press conference. 'I haven't even thought about that (the Bulls semifinal). Give me a moment to catch my breath. I am not thinking about that yet. We will get the group together on Monday, see how everyone is and then we might have to adjust our programme a little bit,' said Plumtree. Bulls coach Jake White is himself pleased with his side's efforts in overturning a 21-8 deficit in the first half, to emerge 42-33 victors over Edinburgh in their quarterfinal at Loftus. He was particularly pleased that they were able to fight back, after they suffered a similar slow start to the same team in their Challenge Cup quarterfinal a few months ago, but went on to lose that game. 'We were down but got a (winning) result. Whereas the last time we played them, we didn't,' said a happy White.
