Critics laud SA shows at Edinburgh

SOUTH African shows are being showered with praise at the world’s largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland.

For the second year running, Johannesburg-born playwright Yael Farber is causing a stir. Last year it was with her provocative play Mies Julie; this year it is with Nirbhaya , based on the gang-rape, mutilation and murder of a Delhi student last year.

The play has scooped a Fringe First award and a clutch of five-star reviews, with the Daily Telegraph’s Laura Barnett calling it “one of the most powerful pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen” and “a piercing scream of a play”.

Scotland’s Evening Times named comedian Loyiso Gola the number two comedy act — top placing went to Irish rap duo The Rubberbandits.

Another Fringe hit is Tara Notcutt’s political thriller, The Three Little Pigs, starring Rob van Vuuren, James Cairns and Albert Pretorius. Awarding the play five stars, the British Theatre Guide said: “The idea of turning a runof-the-mill police thriller into an incisive comedy featuring a menagerie of threatening animals borders on genius.”

Nicholas Spagnoletti’s poignant two-hander, London Road, which has won just about every South African theatre award, has also been basking in the glow of five-star reviews.

Other accolades include the Edinburgh Guide’s “intense esoteric tapestry of old and new” for Wessel Pretorius’s solo piece, Undone. — Christina Kennedy