Latest news with #LaRonde
IOL News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- IOL News
Aidan Scott's 'The Dumb Waiter': a directorial debut packed with tension and drama
Director Aidan Scott (centre) with actors Brent Palmer as Ben and Jock Kleynhans as Gus in 'The Dumb Waiter'. Image: Supplied Currently running at the Theatre on the Square, Harold Pinter's 'The Dumb Waiter' is being praised as a masterclass in tension, dark humour and theatrical precision. Performed by Brent Palmer as Ben and Jock Kleynhans as Gus, both hitmen, the play explores Gus's unravelling curiosity and emotional fragility alongside his much more confident senior partner. Director Aidan Scott, who has a wealth of acting experience under his belt, including playing a series regular on Netflix's 'One Piece', recently starred in Louis Viljoen's thrilling two-hander 'Mrs Mitchell Comes to Town' alongside Jenny Stead and in 'La Ronde', directed by Liela Henriques. On taking the director's seat for 'The Dumb Waiter', Scott shared: 'It is the brainchild of a collaboration between myself and Jock Kleynhans, who stars in the show. We felt a gap in the local theatre landscape for classic plays and Harold Pinter's work in particular. 'Unfortunately, plays like 'The Dumb Waiter' are a big risk for commercial theatres to produce, so we sought to independently produce the production together. 'We knew it was a risk, but audiences came and we sold out our run in Cape Town and are now working with Daphne Kuhn in our second rendition of the play in Johannesburg. This is the first time I have directed, and it's been an absolute joy.' As for the casting of Palmer and Kleynhans, he added, 'The idea to do this particular piece really originated from picturing these two actors together on stage. 'I couldn't imagine two other actors in the country playing these two respective parts, and when they both said yes, I knew I had the key to unlocking this strange puzzle of a text.' Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading Actors Brent Palmer as Ben and Jock Kleynhans as Gus in 'The Dumb Waiter'. Image: Philip Kuhn On realising his vision with this offering, Scott pointed out: 'You come into a process with an idea of how the play looks, feels and sounds. And you then take that ball of thoughts and springboard it off your actors, which then morphs and emerges as a new vision. A collaborative vision. 'As a director, being open to that collaborative process is key. Retaining your voice but also allowing the voices of the team to mesh with yours brings about an end product you could never have imagined in the first place. I think our production does just that.' Following the second run in Joburg, they are looking at touring the shows to the rest of South Africa. When asked what else is in the kitty, Scott revealed: 'I'm currently rehearsing 'Noises Off' at Theatre On The Bay, which will have a two-week run at the end of August before transferring to Johannesburg from October 2 to 12. "I'm also currently learning Zulu for a secret, exciting project that will be announced in the coming months.' Where: Theatre on the Square. When: Runs until August 24, 7.30pm. No under 12s allowed.
IOL News
12-08-2025
- Entertainment
- IOL News
Andrew Buckland's 'Feedback' is among Cape Town's vibrant theatre offerings this week
Awethu Hleli and Carlo Daniels are set to give a compelling performance in Andrew Buckland's 'Feedback' at the Baxter Theatre Centre. Image: Instagram Feedback South African theatre veteran Andrew Buckland returns as writer and director in this play, assisted by award-winning performer Roshina Ratnam. The cast from Baxter's Fires Burning company includes Carlo Daniels, Awethu Hleli, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe and Lyle October, known for productions such as "La Ronde", "Metamorphoses" and "Othello". The show centres around a murder mystery which becomes a fast-paced and unconventional piece of physical theatre, touching on topics like food consciousness and globalisation. Packed with humour, action and sharp social commentary, it celebrates both human generosity and greed. Where: The Baxter Theatre Centre. When: Runs until August 30. Show times differ. Cape Town Opera: The Barber of Seville Rossini's 1816 comic masterpiece returns with a fresh staging from Cape Town Opera. Bursting with wit and memorable music, this opera buffa follows the schemes of Figaro, played by William Berger and Thando Zwane in alternating performances. Innocent Masuku, who recently debuted as Count Almaviva with the English National Opera, reprises the role alongside Dumisa Masoka. Where: Theatre on the Bay in Camps Bay. When: Runs until Sunday, August 17. Show times differ, depending on the day. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading WGRUV: Letters of Reflection This dance production presents seven original works by Holly and Lex Gruver and a much-loved piece by American choreographer Tyler Gilstrap titled 'Unsquared'. Performed by contemporary ballet-trained dancers, the works explore themes of love, loss, work, relationships, doubt and hope. Where: The Star Theatre at the Homecoming Centre. When: Friday, August 15, at 7.30pm and Saturday, August 16, at 3pm.
News24
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News24
‘This is physical': Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde gets a daring modern twist at the Baxter
La Ronde, Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 text, adapted to the modern South African context, is on at the Baxter until Saturday, 12 July. The production is directed by Leila Henriques and features the Baxter's Fires Burning Company. Actor Aidan Scott gives insight into the rehearsal process of the production and comments on the South African theatre industry. A techno beat throbs through the Baxter Theatre as La Ronde opens to South African audiences with a daring and visually striking reimagining of Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play. Directed by award-winning theatre-maker Leila Henriques and running from 20 June to 12 July, the production situates Schnitzler's classic text in the contemporary pulse of Cape Town nightlife, transforming the work's historical eroticism into a culturally resonant exploration of intimacy, power, and class in modern-day South Africa. Schnitzler's text explores ten interconnected sexual encounters across different social classes, a circular structure of interlocking scenes between pairs of lovers. Henriques' production doesn't shy away from this raw material. Instead, it leans in, transforming the stage into a pulsing, strobe-lit dance floor where bodies move intensely and precisely. Sexual morality and class ideology are debated and bent through the characters, and intimacy is exposed in the dynamics of the scene partners. The play opens with a fiery, techno-fuelled dance sequence choreographed by Crystal Finck, immediately immersing the audience in the sensory language of club culture. Transactional erotica is established in the first few beats, and a driving pulse encompasses the production. In Henriques' hands, La Ronde becomes a sweaty dance through modern South African identity, where club culture, class politics, and erotica collide. The characters' actions are honest and large, exposing people in their extreme sexual moments and calling out the contrasts and duality of personhood. The ensemble, featuring Awethu Hleli, Lyle October, Tamzin Daniels, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe, and Carlo Daniels, with Berenice Barbier and Aidan Scott, tackles their roles with a visceral intensity, each playing into their archetypal characters with honesty and edge. These characters — the student, the actor, the soldier, the domestic worker — remain familiar even in their abstraction. Across a spectrum of social class, each character burns with a restless hunger for connection, for escape, for something just out of reach. Their sexual encounters become expressions of desperation, a hope to eradicate boredom and live with an idealised yet clichéd excitement. 'Nothing has changed' 'The themes written 150 years ago were bold and daring at the time — the beginnings of feminism, sexual liberation, class, and power. When you read the play, you realise that nothing has changed,' says Aidan Scott. 'We take that language and situate it in modern South Africa, where the problems that people were experiencing 150 years ago are literally the same as we are experiencing now, and the archetypes of the different characters have not changed. Every character that one is going to see when they watch the show is someone they know.' Scott emphasises that for the actor, the physical demands of a play are deeply rooted in sexuality. 'It's a sex play. That's what it is. Each character, at some point, has sex, and we ask how sex changes a person and how it changes a person in relation to who they have sex with. As an actor, this is physical: how do you walk into a scene? How does the sex change you physically onstage? Do you become more relaxed or highly strung?' Navigating such intimacy required care in the rehearsal room. Scott notes that the theatre industry lacks the intimacy coordinators that film sets require, and oftentimes, it is up to the actors to navigate intimacy in the rehearsal space. The cast handled this by going through the mechanics of intimacy first, blocking what it feels like to be close with someone, and giving it the time and space required to produce safe work. La Ronde is particularly significant as it features the Baxter's newly formed Fires Burning Company, an ensemble initiative that mirrors the model of state-funded theatre companies from the 1970s and 80s. 'It's one of the greatest things happening in SA theatre right now,' Scott says. 'A company that grows together gets better together and builds a theatre culture.' Scott commends Baxter for restarting the theatre company model, an investment in long-term ensemble work that is a rarity in today's theatre landscape. Henriques brings a distinct approach to collaboration shaped by her time working with Barney Simon at the Market Theatre. 'She wanted to discover, deeply discover, allow choices to emerge from those discoveries,' says Scott. The production is bold, sexy, and urgent—qualities that Scott hopes will draw younger audiences to the theatre. 'It's contemporary. It's fresh. It's South African. It's diverse. And it's still really good theatre.' As with much of South African theatre, the challenge remains in attracting audiences. 'With the rise of film and short-form content, theatre has become secondary,' Scott says. 'Audiences will always be an issue.' Still, he remains hopeful. 'This year looks to be one of the most exciting years in South African theatre we've had in a long time. I've seen shows in London and New York, and the work happening here, whether in performance, direction, or design, is just as good. It's beautiful work.'
Daily Maverick
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
La Ronde: Seduction, sex and ennui as a comedy merry-go-round
At the Baxter in Cape Town, a young, energetic cast puts a fresh spin on a play that once caused riots. The result is a hot, funny take on sex as a commodity in the never-ending game of human intercourse. Director Leila Henriques' 2025 revisitation of Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen opens with a bang, although not the kind you'd anticipate from a play that is basically a series of sexual trysts, each one prologued by some or other power game involving seduction, coercion, insistence or out-and-out trickery. While there is plenty of sex throughout this play about how playing the game is often far more entertaining than actually scoring, it's actually the opening dance scene that feels closest to a full-blown human orgy. Tempered by astute choreography and performed with intense sauciness by the ensemble, this joyous, energising romp made me want to jump out of my seat and join the giddy, propulsive spectacle. It was in many ways the biggest seduction scene of them all, and I certainly wanted in on whatever was coming next. There's so much heat in that opening scene, in fact, you wonder where the cast's stamina for the ensuing vignettes of sexually motivated power games will come from. But it's more than a mere attention-grabber. The throbbing music combined with the manner in which these fine actors dance and jive not only sets the scene, but says plenty about the moment we're in. This club's beats-per-minute are sky-high and given the rapturous state of the dancers, they're presumably high too. There's a sense of them being caught up, that they're in step with a beat so fast, so furious, so motivated by what's coming next that there's unlikely to be a pause to appreciate the moment. It's as if the human souls that dwell within these flesh-and-blood characters are not entirely home. Whether they're high on drugs, hormones, lust, competitive spirit or simply high on life is neither here nor there. It's said that we live in an age of distraction, and yet here's a cast of laser-focused actors determined to hold the attention of an audience for whom sitting still and paying attention is anathema, runs counter to the prevailing obsession with more, more, more. Playing at the Baxter until 12 July, La Ronde, which shares its name with the beautifully dreamy Max Ophüls French film version of Schnitzler's play made in 1950, has been reimagined for a younger generation, one that – thanks to the pervasiveness of information these days – means there's very little you can do or say that's likely to shock or surprise. Communal contemplation Except that, when you do in fact do or say or show certain things, those young people do in fact gasp and titter and loudly suck in their breaths. Theatre's power is in the ritual of the shared space, the communal contemplation of ideas and thoughts and experiences, and there is something in the candidness of actually uttering ideas out loud that still has the power to infiltrate even the most blasé imaginations and seen-it-all-before minds. Henriques has dragged Schnitzler's original German-language play happily and bawdily into 2025, and she has found relevant touchpoints for a generation of know-it-alls, transforming a play from a buttoned-up Victorian era into an energised romp that is both accessible and entertaining. And pretty steamy, too. In the process of having Schnitzler's 1897 text leapfrog into 2025, it bypasses much of what has happened in the intervening century-and-a-quarter, though. When Schnitzler first wrote it, the mere idea of openly expressing lustful longing or talking publicly about sexual hook-ups was scandalous. When, in Berlin in 1920, the play was officially performed for the first time (there'd been an earlier unofficial performance in Budapest), a riot ensued. A show in Vienna in 1921 did not go down well at all; Schnitzler was compelled to ban his own play after he was charged with obscenity, and he was subjected to all sorts of public abuse, shamed as a so-called 'Jewish pornographer'. And this in response to a play in which any scenes of actual sex are entirely left to the imagination. Not so in Henriques' version. These days, the merry-go-round ride of sexual dalliances, far from bothering with innuendo and euphemism, is replaced by blunt and blatant tableaux of various forms of intercourse, oral sex and other bedroom pleasures and predilections, fetishes and misadventures that leave little to the imagination. We get, in fact, just enough of a hint of something borderline explicit without edging into the pornographic. If anything, these brief vignettes take on a comic energy, as if the audience is expected to subconsciously measure the distance between what's happening on stage and some altogether more graphic version of it that's already been witnessed elsewhere (an online meme, a film, a photo, actual porn). In other words, part of what gets a giggle or guffaw from the audience is that moment of shared awkwardness in response to seeing images from our over-represented private world reproduced by actors who are merely simulating a sex scene already witnessed elsewhere. It means that while La Ronde is a work of entertainment and a provocation for us to pay attention, it is also living evidence that we are no longer in uptight Europe of the 1920s, or even in an Ophüls movie from the middle of the last century. At the same time, it's perhaps a reminder that we are just as repressed as ever, trapped by our inexplicable obsession with sex. And that while such charged-up depictions of sex aren't likely to cause a riot or evoke scandal, they still speak volumes about our secret desires, our quietly repressed fantasies, our capacity to judge others in their chosen moments of bliss. The difficulty of doing this play effectively today links back to that opening dance scene, which instantly signals that we're not in Europe circa-1897 but in a contemporary world in which multitudes of sexual partners can be sourced via the swipe of a finger across a tiny screen. Casual sex today is so ordinary, so matter of fact, that the play's only truly shocking scene is an evocation of date rape, one which feels remarkably like a public service announcement, as though the depiction of some older 'gentleman' adding a drug to his victim's drink comes across as a kind of warning or reminder to the audience to 'be careful'. It's a crazy moment of near-documentary-style playmaking that's so different from, from example, Ophüls' 1950 film version in which the 'victim' completely turns the tables on the older gentleman, downing as much Champagne as possible so that she can, she says after the fact, blame her sexual indiscretion on the booze rather than on her willingness to be seduced. Not only has the moral centre shifted, but our world today is also one in which the HIV pandemic decades ago affected how people choose to sleep around and with whom. A major undercurrent in Schnitzler's play was that the carousel of sexual partners was effectively about venereal disease, that each of the encounters meant whatever STD the prostitute in scene one is carrying will almost certainly get passed along the daisy chain of romantic liaisons. That sort of warning nowadays seems almost old-fashioned. We are so familiar with every kind of proclivity, fixation and fetish, every sexual compulsion, all the possible genres of erotic desire and fascination, not to mention strategies of seduction, that the challenge for this show is to find newness where, quite frankly, there is barely anything left to excavate or scavenge. Is it weird that, more often than not, it was the non-sexual antics that I found a turn-on? Flipping the lid Moments such as that opening dance scene, with its compelling, compulsive, impulse-firing choreography? Or the outfit worn by Lyle October as he performed a gender-fluid character who flips the lid on Schnitzler's too-heteronormative original ('they' would have been 'she' if they'd stuck with the original)? And there was the clever comedy of the gloriously weird game of domestic ennui that Aidan Scott (as a student in sweatpants that seem destined to come off – spoiler: they do) and Nolufefe Ntshuntshe (as a maid who upends the power dynamic so charmingly and effectively) play off of each other in a scene that smartly, sweetly and hilariously topples all assumptions about who holds the reins of sexual control. Ultimately, what's wonderful about this rendition of the play is its unravelling of perceptions, its demonstration that each of us has a unique and potentially very specific sexual composition, that our fetishes and desires vary from person to person, day to day, even one scene to the next. Therein lies the thrill: that each of us is unique, wants and yearns for something else, is turned on by different things. Leaving the theatre after the show's opening performance, the friend I'd been watching with told me she found the play 'messy'. I initially thought this was a criticism, that – yes – the strands linking each of the scenes could be cleaned up, tamed, better ordered and organised. But, upon further reflection, I think it's the messiness of it all that I liked best about this play. The sweat, the randomness, the wild costumes, the DJ who is there but (unlike the narrator in the Ophüls film) has no purpose other than to witness and hand out props, the mysteriousness of what it is that attracts one person to another, or makes them desire or lust or wish to dominate, humiliate, control, toss aside. It's the sadness in the eyes of the prostitute (played with such grace by Berenice Barbier), the banality of the overly-wordy speeches of the husband (played by Carlo Daniels), and the heartless self-gratification of Lyle October's soldier who, 24-hour pass in hand, is on a mission to screw as much as possible before he must return to barracks. Humans are messy, sex is messy, but nothing is messier than trying to make sense of it. Without the mess and the muck, we'd have no stories, no merry-go-round tales, and probably no reason to spend time in a theatre. DM
CTV News
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Here is the schedule for the Montreal international fireworks competition
Fireworks over the Jacques-Cartier Bridge in Montreal. (Daniel J. Rowe/CTV News) The first explosions of the annual Loto-Quebec International Fireworks Competition in Montreal will sound from La Ronde on Thursday night at 10 p.m. Drivers and residents in the Longueuil and Montreal areas nearby should be aware that roads, including the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, will close starting at 8 p.m. and reopen at midnight. Here are the dates, countries and themes of this year's competition: Thursday, June 26: Viva Latino Viva Latino Thursday, July 3: Italy (Life's Letters) Italy (Life's Letters) Sunday, July 6: Japan (Echoes from Japan: From Screen to Sky) Japan (Echoes from Japan: From Screen to Sky) Thursday, July 10: Canada (Coming Soon: A Fireworks Blockbuster) Canada (Coming Soon: A Fireworks Blockbuster) Thursday, July 17: Switzerland (Autour des comédies musicales) Switzerland (Autour des comédies musicales) Thursday, July 24: U.S.A. (Iron) U.S.A. (Iron) Sunday, July 27: France ([Re]Connection) France ([Re]Connection) Thursday, July 31: Tribute to Taylor Swift Visit for more details on exact road closures.
