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Previous stage productions


Oscar Wilde's classic, The Importance of Being Earnest

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Directed by Barbara Basel
7-15 November 2014


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With
Debi Hawkins as Jane Kitzinger
Melanie O'Conner as Sheila Molyneux
Norman McFarlane as Colin Molyneux
Brian Notcutt as David Kitzinger

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25 July - 2 August 2014
Directed by Coleen van Staden

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Photography by Lynda Jennings of LyndaJ Photography
Take an idealistic architect whose mission it is to revitalize a city slum,  add his loyal wife who wants to  do good at every turn,  mix it up with needy neighbours who are the unworthy  recipients of kindness, and have award winning playwright, Michael Frayn deliver it in an elegant script  and you end up with a  play that is clever,  funny, thought provoking ,and highly entertaining.  

David, Jane, Sheila and Colin invite you to take a peek into their lives.   You may even recognize your neighbours in this…  or better yet,  yourselves! 

As the architect's plans for the development begin to falter and the local council’s demands become more and more impossible, he has to admit  in the end  “it’s not art it’s mathematics,”  and his design ends up  having to include “two socking great skyscrapers”, a design that is in total discord with everything the architect stands for.

The trials and tribulations faced by architects are handled with humour and empathy in this well-crafted play, but it is the drama about dreams not realized,  loyalty and betrayal, kindness and the futility of good intentions in this richly layered piece, that has invited world-wide rave reviews for Michael Frayn’s Benefactors.  

Although set in Britain, the theme of Benefactors will resonate strongly with our City and its citizens as we celebrate our World Design Capital 2014 status and consider design and its role in social and economic change.

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14-22 March 2014
Directed by Wendy Goddard

David and Jane Kenway have a very happy marriage living in a flat in Wavertree Mansions with their five year old son Billy and their stack of unpaid bills. David is an actor and Jane looks after their home, an idyll of peace and harmony … Until into this oasis of perfection appears one mouse and an upstairs neighbour who in the space of two glasses of wine turns Jane (and the absent David’s) world upside down!

Meet the characters who complicate David and Jane’s life beyond belief, from a crazy lighting “expert”, wielding lighting stands with disastrous results, to a film director who speaks only Italian! Oh, and let’s not forget a talkative middle-aged lady who is convinced that she’s witnessed a murder and sends for the police. And then there’s the rather sweet, but slightly camp, advertising agent and David’s uncle, the Brigadier who certainly won’t stand for any nonsense.
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With
Lienkie Diedericks as Jane
Daniel Enticott as Michael
David Luyt as David
Grant  Bottcher as Drake
Charnelle Danica as Virginia
Jana Botha as Mrs Chatham
Kim  Randleff-Rasmussen as Wendy
John McConnell as Richard
Alastair Duff as Dino
Mark Jennings as Sergeant
Photography by Lynda Jennings of LyndaJ Photography



Alfred Hitchcock's thriller

ROPE

Directed by Alistair Duff
20 November to 7 December 2013
THE PERFECT MURDER?

Based upon a play by Patrick Hamilton, it was adapted by Arthur Laurents for Alfred Hitchcock’s famous movie. "Rope" was based upon a true story that rocked polite society in the 1920s.

In order to prove their superior intellects, two talented, well-to-do young men commit "the perfect crime" to illustrate the superman theories of Nietzsche, taught to them by their schoolmaster, Rupert Cadell.

A supper party is then held at the boys' swank uptown New York apartment - the guests invited are friends and family of the victim, as well as their former teacher Rupert.Events build up to a shocking climax. In true Hitchcock fashion, the tense, edgy script provides a taut, entertaining and nail-biting piece of theatre. 
Photography by Lynda Jennings, LyndaJ Photography

They thought that murder was an art ... and that they would get away with it ...

With Richard Higgs, Gary Green, Barbara Basel, Wayne Ronné
Lizanne Peters, John McConnell, Eve Carr and Gavin Werner.
The Road To Mecca
The Road To Mecca poster
Director Barbara Basel’s deeply-felt interpretation of “The Road to Mecca” by Athol Fugard opens at the Masque Theatre, Muizenberg, on Friday 26 July 2013. The combination of Basel’s directing style and three strong actors will give the audience new insights into this popular Fugard play.

Helen Martins, a sculptor of works in glass and cement (which she refers to as her Mecca), is at a crossroads in her life. She feels like an outsider in her own community of Nieu Bethesda. Only her long-distance friend Elsa offers emotional support and acceptance. In the character of the dominee we see some of the rigidness of the local community, at odds with his own feelings for Helen. 

Martins embodies the sense of alienation some of us experience in a society that misunderstands what is unfamiliar and sees it as threatening. Today her Owl House and its fascinating sculptures are famous.

The play takes place during the course of one evening in which all three characters bare their souls in an attempt to decide on Helen’s fate. While ”The Road to Mecca” is a drama, there are many light-hearted and touching moments in the play. 




Cast of The Road To Mecca
Left to right: Sue Cunningham (who plays Miss Helen), Pamela Burger (as Miss Helen's friend, Elsa) and David Muller (as Marius Byleveld).
Barbara Basel
Director: Barbara Basel
Playwright Athol Fugard
Athol Fugard, one of South Africa’s leading dramatists, turned 80 last year and in June 2011 was awarded a lifetime Achievement Tony Award in New York in recognition of his life’s work.
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Some of Helen Martins’ sculptures, which can be seen at the Owl House in Nieu Bethesda.

In the Camel Yard, scores of statues – many of them wise men, camels and owls – face East, towards a Mecca of sorts.

This is where a simple decision, to embellish her environment, was to grow into an obsessive urge to express her deepest feelings, her dreams and her desires. She left behind a startling and powerful vision of her world, one that is larger than life.

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Hedda Gabler poster
A psychological thriller by Henrik Ibsen
by arrangement with Oxford University Press

Directed by Richard Higgs
15 - 23 March 2013
Desperate times call for desperate measures: just how desperate can people become, when the simplest actions lead to an alarming tangle of consequences?

The beautiful and headstrong Hedda Tesman, recently married to a boring academic, believes she has found a way to make her life more interesting when some remarkable coincidences give her the power to manipulate the people around her. But is she really the one pulling the strings?

Still regarded as one of the greatest psychological thrillers on stage, and one of the greatest dramatic roles for an actress, Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is a groundbreaking classic. Stagings of Hedda Gabler have always been controversial, and the MADS production promises to be no exception. So many possible questions and motives remain hidden behind the action, that the director is forced to choose which of the darker passions would have led to the final, tragic outcome of the play. No character remains untainted, every possible motive is somewhat sordid: adultery, ambition and addiction twist and curl together with the tragic beauty of Art Nouveau wallpaper.
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The Cast of Hedda Gabler
The Cast (L to R): Luke Brown, Philippe Pringiers, Tamara Richards, Brendon Spiro, Kelly Kowalski. Seated: Pilar Pringiers. Insert: Jana Botha.

Alan Ayckbourn's
Season's Greetings

Directed by Coleen van Staden
1 - 9 June 2012

Christmas is about log fires, Christmas trees, excited children's faces, candle-light, the holly and the mistletoe. The Bunker’s home has all these. It’s comfy and cosy and it swarms with children. Not the smaller, shorter variety though, but the taller older ones – currently going through the ‘awkward’ age, the twenty-five to seventy year olds. They’re all there. Fighting over their toys, clamouring for attention, bullying, sneaking and crying, then kissing and making up and generally getting far too over-excited, as they always do every year at Christmas.
Season’s Greetings is a play about unrequited love, success and failure, jealousy, greed, lust and gluttony. Just your “average family Christmas”. This is Ayckbourn at his best – his gift to you is a comedy full of wit, hilarious situations, quirky characters and a puppet show that only a mother could love!

The Breakfast Club
a stage adaptation of John Hughes' iconic screenplay

Directed by Raymond Rudolph
10 - 18 February 2012

Five young people with nothing in common are forced to spend a day together, in a setting from which they cannot remove themselves.  Inevitably verbal, emotional & physical sparring ensues, as the group transforms and new relationships are forged.  What will happen to them when the day is over?  This ostensibly simple storyline belies the depth of the emotional experience which John Hughes’ well crafted comedy drama has provided to millions of moviegoers and subsequent video-viewers over the past 26 years.
  
The Breakfast Club has remained popular long after most of its contemporary counterparts have faded into obscurity and it still appears in countless “Top 10 best ever movie” lists, even in those created by young people whose parents enjoyed the movie during its initial run!   Clearly the underlying themes remain as relevant today as then: stereotyping; teen peer-pressure & isolation; the communication gap between parents & kids and between teachers & students; domestic violence; drugs; romance in unexpected settings; and more. 


Blithe Spirit

Noël Coward's comedy
Blithe Spirit

Directed by Barbara Basel
12 - 20 October 2012

Nick Hall's
Eat Your Heart Out

Directed by Tom Byrne
14 -18 August 2012

Eat Your Heart Out is a comedy about Charlie, a charming young man trying to make it as an actor in New York City.  While waiting for his big break to come along, he works as a waiter. Each scene of the story takes place in a different restaurant. Charlie endures frustration, humiliation, moral dilemmas and falling in love in a series of very funny scenes. 

Eat Your Heart Out was the first ever production that was offered as supper theatre at the Masque. It was a resounding success and played to full houses.
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"Eat Your Heart Out" director, Tom Byrne
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Above: Actor Paul Herrmann (right) playing an irate patron, trying to get the waiter, Charlie's attention (Rudy Gibbons)
Eat Your Heart Out, dinner theatre
The cast of "Eat Your Heart Out" (back ltr) Tobie Beele, Roseanna McBain, Lynda Jennings, Paul Herrmann, Wayne Ronné, Rebecca Pistener, Daniel Enticott, (front) Rudy Gibbons & Michaela O'Toole

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