A feast for theatre lovers at the Cape Town Fringe Festival

"It demonstrates how independent artists and arts companies are passionately engaging with the world around them and bringing that experience to their work," says Artistic Director Ismail Mahomed, adding that the Cape Town Fringe was evolving its own artistic fingerprint - that of an engaged, original, and socially aware programme.

While the programme comprises mostly theatre- dance, performance art, physical theatre, music, family theatre and magic will round off the 11-day festival.

"The programme includes work that has left audiences stunned at other festivals and theatres, as well as fresh work from established companies and a selection of new voices. We believe it is an invigorating mix that will blow audiences away," Mahomed said.

Of the feast of 70 productions, here are some highlights:

• Adam Small Bejazzed pays tribute to literary giant Adam Small, using his published and unpublished poetry, with jazz music composed by Camillo Lombard, Kurt Egelhof, Dillon April, Natalia Da Rocha, Dominic Paulsen and Keanu Harker and starring Natalia Da Rocha.

• An Extraordinarily Ordinary Life is a raw, really funny and brutally honest musical memoir comedy performed by and introducing The Capetonians, comprising Grassy Park-born Janine Cupido singing 10 new folk-hop songs from Cape Town-born songwriter Jervis Pennington (The Soft Shoes, Scribble, A Town called Fokol-Lutho). The music is drawn from and woven into his hilarious, but frequently shambolic, life - from famous to homeless in the blink of an eye.
  

• Richard Antrobus brings Being Norm back to the Mother City to present a day in the life of Norman, using masterful mime, vocal effects and physical clowning, this comic solo is a light, fun-filled, simple yet bizarre adventure of one man's humble struggle against the universe, which conspires to make his life difficult.

• Barred is a new site-specific production that has been exclusively made to be performed in the stylish, old-world, jazz sounding space that is the Alexander Bar featuring Raine Waring, Chane Otto, Asisipho Malunga, Gabriella Bishop.

At the Alexander Bar you can also see two superb productions from PANSA award-winning and multi-Naledi-nominated writer Jannes Erasmus: Still; the gripping tale of a sister's endless endeavour to find her missing little brother, and Smaarties, is a mind-blowing one-man show about a man who is diagnosed with schizophrenia and finds himself in a psychiatric ward after the death of both his parents.

Dance lovers and those who enjoy physical theatre will delight in Barbed Wire Wallpaper, exploring the daily routine of a woman's work that keeps her enslaved; Blood Orange is the story of Gecko, a boy who has an oblique, out-of-synch way of seeing the world, of his childhood among the green hills of Natal and of his jagged school days in the Cape, where the Simonsberg drinks the Blood Orange sun at dusk; and Ontwrig is a workshop production that examines ideas on the body with reference to post-apartheid South Africa, and the traumas often experienced in our country.

If you are looking for drama, Ella's Horses tells the true story of an eccentric horse-whisperer and explores with deep-felt emotion questions about the after-life, animals in creation, and the forbidden love between women in a time gone past; Mooi Street Moves is a modern South African classic by famed local playwright Paul Slabolepszy. This is a tragi-comic look at a white country bumpkin and a black urban hustler thrown together in 1993 in a Hillbrow flat; and Athol Fugard's People are Living There explores the struggles of a 50-year-old woman, starring Imke du Toit, Kiroshan Naidoo, Almar Mulle, Clarissa Roodt.

Fun escapism

If you are looking for fun escapism, Vanessa Harris, Lucy Tops and Genna Galloway bring down the house is the crazy cabaret comedy Big Girls; based on observations of South African life, the different sketches, routines, and parody music numbers range from ridiculous to laugh-out-loud hilarious, Naked Knitting is fresh, pure entertainment performed by the hot comic duo Daniel Geddes and Mark Tatham; the creators of Champ bring you Porno 88: A Xxx Reading, a "salacious and risqué" reading of Lois Viloen's play featuring Pierre Malherbe, Emily Child, Amy Wilson, Terry Norton, Louis Viljoen, Greg Karvellas; and The Ranga is a one-man comedy written and performed by madcap Aaron McIlroy, well known for his live comedy shows and as Mr Milton, Spud's dad in all the Spud movies.

On the musical front, Maltese Folktales is a captivating, interdisciplinary production that brings together traditional folk tales, shadow puppetry, contemporary music and digital animation. Gug'othandayo - The Musical features a poignant, heart-warming series of narratives that tells of the joys and dark times as grannies who remember back to a time before their 'life in the pension lane'.

Experience a feast of live theatre and go to www.capetownfringe.co.za to book your seats and for more information on the diverse programme.