14/08/2026
Review: Brasse, Tot Laat Toe
I wasnโt going to review as my Afrikaans is not great and this play is in Afrikaaps. Zubayr Charles has created a complex, nuanced and dense text. Obvs, I missed out on chunks. But, I decided last minute to put my thoughts down - to reflect on the visual and visceral impact of this production.
It is bathed in a glow of beautiful light, ignited by physical theatre, with tender and sensitive performances by Anzio September and Abdullatief Davids.
Carlo Daniels as director, with his approach to physical theatre, presents these protagonists as physical embodiments of their pain. They carry the trauma through their bodies. The Masambe Baxter Theatre has been transformed into a space, stripped of walls and curtains. It is an arena for these two men, in conversation to bare their souls. There is an urgent intimacy to this play - this production. Beautiful/ despite its subject matter - and pain. The actors are dressed in white - sanctified somehow in the way they are trying to connect, talk, despite chasms and ruptures.
And so an urgent conversation plays out in this stripped down theatre; holding space, containing this drama. Empty picture frames dangle - emblematic of memories- erased maybe convenient amnesia - but very much asserting their presence. The ties that connect and disconnect us, hover in the space.
I hope that this play will be staged again.
See interviews with the team. Bravo!
The Cape Robyn
Robyn Cohen
Review: Brasse, Tot Laat Toe, an urgent and visceral intimacy -
