……BILLY SUTER……
THIS is a sad time for Durban theatre – the city’s nationally acclaimed KickstArt theatre company, headed by Steven Stead and Greg King, will be presenting only one show in KwaZulu-Natal this year.
This will be a revival of the ace team’s festive season pantomime, Cinderella, to be directed by Bryan Hiles this time around, as both Stead and King will be up to their eyeballs in work elsewhere in the country most of this year.
After creating the hugely successful Pieter Toerien and Cape Town Opera musicals, The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady, both of which toured nationally, Stead will direct (and King will design) the Bizet opera, Carmen, for Cape Town Opera later this year.
And there are two big touring musicals in the pipeline – perhaps most exciting being a Stead-directed production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!, for Pieter Toerien Productions and Cape Town Opera, which will be performed in Cape Town over the festive season and move to Johannesburg early in 2027.
Stead, who has just returned to Durban from a theatre binge last week in London, where he and King saw the West End production of Oliver!, said today that he would be in Cape Town to audition for Oliver! on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week.
He added that, unlike with My Fair Lady, Durban would not be on the itinerary for Oliver!, the hit musical that features such well-loved songs as Consider Yourself, As Long as He Needs Me, I’d Do Anything, Where is Love?, Reviewing the Situation and Oom Pah Pah.
More immediately – and hot on the heels of Stead and King’s very well-received, outdoor production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, now running at Cape Town’s Maynardvile Open-Air Festival until March 14 – there will be a touring production of the talented twosome’s excellent production of Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This will be a recast version of the KickstArt musical that wowed Durban last year and recently took a number of Broadway World South Africa Awards.
The new production – scheduled for Cape Town’s Artscape from April 7 to May 31, before heading for Johannesburg’s Pieter Toerien Theatre at Montecasino from June 12 to August 15 – will be produced by Pieter Toerien Productions in association with the Luitingh Alexander Musical Theatre Academy (LAMTA).
Only Schoeman Smit, as butler Riff-Raff, will remain from the Durban cast.
The touring The Rocky Horror Show will star Craig Urbani as sweet transvestite Frank N Furter and Natasha Sutherland as Narrator.
Among others in the cast are Léa Blerk (Joseph, Dear Evan Hansen) as Janet, Robert Everson (Noises Off, Tony Awards) as Brad, Jasmine Minter (Joseph, The Addams Family) as Magenta, Anna Olivier (Joseph) as Columbia, Micah Stokajovic (My Fair Lady, Peter Pan) as Rocky and Zak Hendrikz (Sewe, A Christmas Carol) as Eddie/Dr Scott.
Miguel de Sampaio, Tjaart van der Walt, Cleo Wesley, Alessia Gironi, Taya Pearson, Gabi Knight and Sasha Duffy make up the stellar ensemble.
.....SoSuterBill..... 