Latest news with #LaRonde
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.
IOL News
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- IOL News
La Ronde: A Provocative Look at Love and Power in Contemporary Society
Lyle October and cast or La Ronde. Image: Mark Dobson Nothing is quite as it seems in Arthur Schnitzler's provocative play, La Ronde, directed by Leila Henriques, on the Baxter Studio stage this winter. Written in 1897 by Austrian author and dramatist, Schnitzler's La Ronde is a story of ten characters from different parts of society, all searching for escape and connection through sex. Henriques locates the story in 2025 with an all Fleur du Cap award-winning cast and creative team. The dynamic cast comprises The Baxter's resident Fire's Burning company; Awethu Hleli, Lyle October, Tamzin Daniels, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe and Carlo Daniels, along with Berenice Barbier and Aidan Scott. Crystal Finck is the assistant director and choreographer, set design is by Patrick Curtis, costume design by Wolf Britz, lighting design by Franky Steyn and music curation by Keir Mantzios. In a world obsessed with visibility, image and performance, this modern adaptation of La Ronde probes a world where intimacy is currency, sex is a calculated strategy and everyone is performing for someone. La Ronde is French for the round and refers to a dance performed in circle formation. It also means 'from one person to another' and creates the perfect metaphor for Schnitzler's play, driven by raw physicality, pulsating contemporary music and visceral dance. It takes a funny, provocative look at relationships now, delving into the complexities of power, desire and the relentless pursuit of connection. Through the ten characters and ten intimate encounters, it offers a sharp look at who holds power, who is exploited and who is seen. La Ronde is set in contemporary Cape Town and seen through the eyes of a DJ who finds the perfect track to cover each smooth or clumsy sexual encounter. 'We become involved with these ten characters in the play, all from different walk of life, all in search of something more, any kind of escape and intimacy through each other,' said Henriques. 'The play is funny, awkward and often poignant, as we watch how the characters chase love. It is a deeply human story and anyone who has ever pursued love will be able to recognise themselves in it,' Playwright Arthur Schnitzler is regarded as one of the most significant representatives of Viennese Modernism. His works, which include psychological dramas and narratives, dissected 19th century bourgeois life in Vienna. The sexual content of his works was considered controversial and were banned at the time. Over the years at The Baxter, Henriques was seen in Curse of the Starving Class, directed by Sylvaine Strike. She directed The List and Hani, which won a Golden Ovation award at the Grahamstown Festival. The entire La Ronde cast is a Fleur du Cap award-winning ensemble. Earlier this year, the Baxter's Fires Burning Company won the Best Ensemble award for Metamorphoses, while Aidan Scott clinched the Best New Director acknowledgement for The Dumb Waiter. In 2023 Berenice Barbier walked away as Best Supporting Actress for her role as Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? La Ronde runs for a limited season from June 20 to July 12, 2025 at 8pm, with Saturday matinees at 3pm. There is an age restriction of 16 years and parental guidance is advised. Booking is through Webtickets online or at Pick n Pay stores. Cape Times
IOL News
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- IOL News
La Ronde: a provocative exploration of sex and power at the Baxter
Awethu Hleli, Carlo Daniels, Berenice Barbier, Lyle October, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe, Aiden Scott, Tamzin Williams Image: Mark Dobson La Ronde is set to ignite The Baxter Studio this winter with a daring and darkly comic new production directed by Leila Henriques, running from 20 June to 12 July 2025. Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's once-censored 1897 play, this contemporary reimagining explores themes of sex, power, and longing through a chain of encounters between 10 strikingly different characters. In a world obsessed with visibility, image and performance, this modern adaptation of LaRonde probes a world where intimacy is currency, sex is a calculated strategy and everyone is performing for someone. Set in modern-day Cape Town, the play unfolds through the eyes of a DJ, who soundtracks each scene with music that reflects the emotional tempo of the characters' intimate exchanges. 'This play is funny, awkward and deeply human,' said Henriques. 'Anyone who's ever chased love or connection will see themselves in it.' Lyle October, Berenice Barbier and cast of La Ronde Image: Mark Dobson The production features The Baxter's acclaimed Fire's Burning Company — Awethu Hleli, Lyle October, Tamzin Daniels, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe and Carlo Daniels — joined by Berenice Barbier and Aidan Scott, both of whom have earned critical praise, with Scott recently honoured as Best New Director at the Fleur du Cap Awards. With design by Patrick Curtis, costumes by Wolf Britz, and lighting by Franky Steyn, La Ronde merges visceral choreography, sharp-witted dialogue, and a pulsing score into a theatrical experience that's provocative, poignant, and unapologetically bold. Cast members shared their thoughts on the production with Weekend Argus, reflecting on its emotional depth and cultural relevance. 'It's both exciting and scary,' said Awethu Hleli, reflecting on performing La Ronde in a contemporary South African context. 'As young artists in South Africa, we don't shy away from complexity — we embrace it. We're part of a generation that's evolved in how we think about sexuality, and we're using our voices to engage with topics that were once considered taboo.' Asked to choose a song that captures her character's experience, Hleli chose Dolly Parton's Just Because I'm a Woman. 'My character is very aware of her own strength and how that can be used against her — or judged — as if she's somehow less capable of loving.' For Carlo Daniels, the play unlocks deeper reflections on romantic relationships. 'La Ronde really gets you thinking differently and reveals some hard truths about relationships,' he said. 'They're often complex and layered — especially once they're consummated — but what the play shows is that these knots can be untangled, even if it takes time.' He added: 'It's always great working with this team. You're reminded of what a gift real teamwork is, and the kind of magic that can come from it.' For Berenice Barbier, it's the silence in La Ronde that speaks loudest. 'There's a moment where everything goes completely still — no lines, no gestures — just a quiet return to self-realisation,' she said. 'It's charged with unspoken tension and self-awareness. That silence says more than a monologue ever could. Every night it lands differently, and that unpredictability is thrilling.' Carlo Daniels, Awethu Hleli and cast of La Ronde, Image: Mark Dobson Though La Ronde is rich with emotionally charged and intimate scenes, it's also filled with unexpected moments of levity. 'I'm definitely the one most likely to burst out laughing during a serious scene,' Barbier admitted. 'But those moments are a gift — they remind us not to take ourselves too seriously.' It's this balance — between humour and discomfort, silence and revelation — that gives La Ronde its power. As Hleli put it, 'We're part of a generation that doesn't shy away from complexity. We embrace it.' In this bold new staging, La Ronde becomes more than a series of encounters — it's a mirror held up to modern intimacy, in all its vulnerability, contradiction and connection." [email protected] Weekend Argus
