WIN TICKETS – East Coast Radio House + Garden Show
Whether you are looking for kitchen ideas or ways to revamp your outside space, or better yet, fun ideas to keep the kids entertained over the school holidays, The East Coast Radio House and Garden Show 2025 is turning up the heat. Cairey Baxter-Bruce, the show director, said the spotlight this year will be on the latest and greatest in kitchen design, tech, and taste.
'Kitchens are the new hangout zones,' said Baxter-Bruce. 'It's not just about cooking anymore. It's about creating a melting pot of style and function. A space that can be both beautiful and practical. It's about effortlessly making the heart of your home something seriously cool.'
A dazzling line up of celebrity chefs will also be at the site cooking up any number of delectable storms. Sizzling hot names like MasterChef SA judge and author, Pete Goffe-Wood, Fehmz, Jackie Cameron, Chef Nono Mtshali and Sinoyolo Sifo will be joined by the who's who of other culinary whizzes, from Chef Linda Mnikathi to the Paruk Sisters of Chilli Chocolate, Joshua J to Zanab Paruk.
Also Read: East Coast Radio House + Garden Show brings the heat
Another cool feature at the East Coast Radio House and Garden Show 2025 is the new-look Kids Zone and Teen Zone which will take your little ones to intergalactic heights with enough fun, crazy, scary and cool activities to keep them happy and engaged throughout the school holidays.
You can drop the kids off at the designated zones so they can climb on board the Fairytale Express, and go on a magical ride. They also stand a chance to bump into their favourite cartoon characters at the show. If they are feeling brave, they can visit the creepiness of Monster Manor, sport a cool, temporary airbrush tattoo, and join in the mega-competitive Nerf Gun games. The Kids Zone and the Teen Zone will be open daily from midday to 18:00.
For little ones, there's the FUNtastic Melissa and Doug Play Space where they can road-test their latest toys. Let them get madly messy on the weekends with a little face painting from 15:00 to 17:00. Mermaid Calypso is going to be there. She'll not only meet 'n greet you, but pose for a photograph with your kids, every weekday from 12:30 to 13:30.
On the weekends, there are other fantastical fairytale character meet and greets from 15:00 to 16:00. Monster Manor will open daily from 12:00 to 21:00. To purchase a ticket for the show, visit https://itickets.co.za/events/482380. Prices range from R20 to R120. You can also WIN yourself a pair of double tickets to attend the show by filling in the form below:
WIN TICKETS - East Coast Radio House + Garden Show
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IOL News
04-07-2025
- IOL News
What's On: July 5
Clive Sithole with one of his ceramic works. He is among artists exhibiting with the Durban Art Gallery at the House & Garden Show this weekend. Image: Supplied MARKETS Shongweni Farmers & Craft Market: Spend time with family (pets included) and friends outdoors. Traders sell everything from fresh produce and deli food to arts and crafts. Walk the short nature trail or have a zipline adventure. Open rain or shine, and wheelchair accessible from 7am to 1pm. Musgrave Market: Head to Berea Park for food, music, arts and crafts. From 9am to 2pm. Buzz Market: Community market at 38 Pitlochry Road, Westville, 9am to 2pm. Ballito Farmers Market: More than 150 traders offer fresh farm produce, cut flowers and a nursery, retail, fashion, kids' entertainment, art, hobbies, crafted goods and lifestyle products. R103 at Umhlali. 7am to 2pm. Harlequins Flea Market: Every Saturday from 8am to 1pm. New vendors welcome. WhatsApp 083 595 7033 or email harlequinsmarket@ Rotary Uvongo Flea Market: Crafts, toys, bead work, wire work, clothing and food every Saturday from 8.30am to 1pm and Sunday 9am to 2pm, opposite Douglas Mitchell Sports Grounds. Call 082 829 0059. Golden Hours Market: (tomorrow) Family-friendly market at Golden Hours School, 10am to 2pm. Live music and food stalls. Call 083 262 3693. uMhlanga Farmers Market: Autumn Drive, Prestondale, every Wednesday from 8am to noon. Call Ethel at 060 303 3957. SHOWS Playhouse Opera: (today and tomorrow) KZN Young Performers Project presents the musical, Annie, the story of the plucky youngster and her quest for a bright new life outside of the walls of Miss Hannigan's dreary orphanage. Directed by Daisy Spencer; with musical direction by Des Govender; and choreography by Evashnee Pillay. The cast comprises 120 performers. Until July 13. Tickets R150-R280 from Webtickets and Pick n Pay stores nationwide. Playhouse Drama: (today and tomorrow) Little Shop of Horrors comes to the Playhouse. A ridiculous and hilarious horror-spoof, in which a plant, which has a desire for world domination, grows by eating people with all the lead characters falling prey to its voracious appetite. July 5 at 2pm 7.30pm and July 6 at 3pm. Tickets R50-R100 from webtickets. Milkwood Theatre: (today) Shri Manesh Maharaj presents his students in an offering of Hindustani classical and modern music titled Swaranjali. Sitar, Tabla, Harmonium and vocal music come together in a spiritual experience in a delightful evening of North Indian music. July 5 at 6pm. Tickets R100 from webtickets. Rhumbelow Theatre, Durban: (today and tomorrow) Rock Across America features Barry Thomson & The Reals celebrating America's top rock hits in the 1970s. This is a genre of rock music characterised by a straightforward, often roots musical style, often with a focus on blue-collar workers, and a conviction that rock music has a social or communal purpose beyond just entertainment. July 5 at 7.30pm, July 6 at 2pm. Tickets R200 from webtickets. MUSIC Durban Jewish Club: (tomorrow) An afternoon of music featuring world-class soloists, pianist Christopher Duigan and guitarist James Grace. Their programme includes many of their own arrangements on classic melodies, jazz standards, Latin milongas and Spanish classics. Sunday July 6 at 2.30pm. Tickets: R140 at the door. Contact or 071 505 1021 The Barn at Westown Square: (tomorrow) Catch Sunday Sounds every Sunday from noon to 3pm featuring a line-up of Durban's finest musicians. FILM Rhumbelow Theatre Film Club: With cinemas closing or really expensive, and Netflix becoming stay-at-home-predictable, enjoy the notion of an old-fashioned movie night out with friends… with a drink in your hand (an adult beverage – at club prices) and affordable snacks and light meals (other than popcorn). The club opens its doors every Wednesday for a smorgasbord of films from vintage and classics to more modern and interesting films. Membership is R300 for six months, with a WhatsApp group informing you of what's on and what's coming. SASSA grant recipients can join for free. Call Roland on 082 499 8636 or email: roland@ ART KZNSA: The gallery hosts its annual Members' Award Show. The theme of the exhibition is Imisinga (Currents) with submissions thinking about how water holds memory, movement, and meaning. It is a source of life, ritual, conflict, and celebration. In Durban, water surrounds and sustains us culturally, historically, environmentally but it also reminds us of our vulnerabilities. House and Garden Show: (today and tomorrow) Durban Art Gallery is showcasing the work of the city's exciting emerging artists who will be exhibiting alongside established artists at the Durban Exhibition Centre. Ends Sunday. Artists include Joseph Manana (painting); Clive Sithole (pottery); Thobi Shange (painting); Frank Sesing Morai (ceramics); Mzamo Mlambo (mixed media); Niamh Walsh-Vorster (photography); Ncamisile Nala (pottery); Njabulo Vezi (painting); Sboniso Sithole (painting); Lungisani Ndlovu (woodcut); Manqoba Bhengu (painting) and Mzamo Dlungwana (charcoal). Woza Moya Gallery, Hillcrest: The exhibition Behind Closed Doors opened last night. Features the work of artist Sinethemba Ndimande, and photographers Masibulele Nako and Manelisi Nene. OUTDOORS Amblers Hiking Club: (tomorrow) At 2pm July 6 we hike New Golf Driving range at second Hillcrest off-ramp from M13. An interesting hike to the top waterfalls of Giba Gorge. Pizzas after at Hayways. Call David 072 615 0559. Recycles Group: Meet at 9am on Tuesdays at the parking area behind Pirates life saving club. For a 20 km ride on the promenade. Open to beginners, sociable, safe and an option for a breakfast at Pirates coffee shop. Call Ian to join on 083 675 2125. Retreads walking group: Join for a 3 or 5 km social walk on Tuesdays at 9am on the promenade followed with an option of breakfast at Pirates. Call Michele on 083 779 7443 Mountain Biking Rides: Saturdays at 6am, meet at Dura Cycles, Uvongo. Call 039 315 7359.
Daily Maverick
29-06-2025
- 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
IOL News
27-06-2025
- IOL News
Pan Africanist artist Simphiwe Dana will enthrall crowds with her 'magic' at the Baxter
Simphiwe Dana at the Playhouse Image: Hugh Mdlalose IF THE Durban leg of her delightful concert over a week ago is anything to go by, loyal fans of music sensation Simphiwe Dana are in for a magical time at the Baxter this weekend. On Friday and Saturday, Dana is in Cape Town to round up her three-city 20th anniversary as a professional musician, her debut album, Zandisile took South Africa by storm in 2004 and gave us some of the most loved and enduring songs ever to come from this land recently. From the time the lights hit the expansive stage of the Opera, the 1224-seater at the Playhouse, Dana made a grand entrance with her anthemic Nkwenkwezi. As fans whistled, ululated, and went absolutely crazy, it was evident the Pan Africanist diva and her forces were in for epic vocal and spiritual libations of joyous music and dazzling lights. Despite a disappointingly average turnout, Dana and her 24-member band led by Tshepo Tsotetsi stuck to the mandate and turned the night into an unforgettable and intimate celebration I would not have wanted to miss for the world. Special guests, Clermont township choir, Red Light Choir added a perfect choral flavour to the evening. 'I am here to thank the people for supporting me all these years,' she said a few hours before the show. The chatty award-winning composer and band leader was determined to let her audience feel her appreciation, a theme she kept going till her final song for the night. 'Sanibonani bantu baKwaZulu!' From her greetings as her band was warming up, and throughout the show, her rapport with her audience was unbreakable. The thunderous response to her question whether anyone of Mpondo and Thembu ancestry was in the house or not was yet another show of her deep love for her cultural roots and their socio-philosophical anchorage. Gifted not just with a golden and versatile voice, Dana draws from a rich traditional South African blues, jazz and Southern African choral source whose Pan Africanist timbre and textures continue to attain depth and harmony of voice. Watching her and hearing her sing can take one to the old rural Transkei hinterlands where girls not only listened to the music of the elders, but also were adept at playing instruments such as umrhubhe-mouth bow. Although unlike her predecessors among them Nofinishi Dywili, Mantombi Matotiyana and Madosini, she does not play umrhubhe, at times her blues vocal style gestures to the echoes of their revered multivocal overtone singing style known as umngqokolo. Inasmuch as she has had a wide range of musical influences including jazz, reggae, hip-hop, gospel, Afro soul and maskandi over the years, as a politically and culturally conscious artist, Dana refuses to imprison her spirited repertoire to narrow prisms of fixed time, space and breadth. Neither does she feel comfortable being compared to her role models among them, iconic Sophiatown divas such as Miriam Makeba, Dorothy Masuku, Sophie Mgcina and Thandi Klaasen, insisting what they accomplished under harsh conditions is simply unrepeatable. Since she came into the scene in 2004 with her album, Zandisile, Dana has been searching for healing, affirming her life and the lives of people who are special to her. In Tribute to maMjoli, she remembers her beloved and stunningly beautiful late mother, Noziphumo maMjoli Dana who died of a Covid-19-related illness in 2021.
