“Doing Lunch” With The Cape Town Fringe

One of the easiest, breeziest things about the Cape Town Fringe festival – set to run in the Mother City between 25 September and 5 October – is that the programme has been planned to keep step with the everyday rhythm of the city. This means that you will be able to catch a world-class performance over lunch without skipping a beat.

Shows have been specially scheduled to take place in the middle of the day, so that you can enjoy some transporting theatre during your snack break before nipping back to the office, taking an afternoon stroll through the Company Gardens, or hunting down vintage paraphernalia on Long Street.

“We’re very conscious that this is a working City and we’re trying to stage a big event in the middle of it. And so we’ve been careful to schedule around people’s lives, trying to give them plenty of opportunity to be part of it,” says CT Fringe CEO Tony Lankester, keying straight in to the pacey metropolitan energy of the fest.

Unlike the fully immersive experience of the National Arts Festival, the Cape Town Fringe is a part of a City, which means you can time your bookings to make them work for you. So whether you’re planning on taking in one show or 10, why not lunch out creatively?

With performances taking place in a variety of venues in the CBD, from the City Hall to the German Club, “we also invite you to take some time to explore the city”, Patricia de Lille, Executive Mayor of Cape Town, a proud partner in this inaugural Fringe event wrote in the Fringe programme. “Cape Town boasts a wide selection of activities for everyone to enjoy and the diversity of its people is its most magnificent attraction.”

The lunchtime shows will start at 1.05pm and end just before 2pm, giving you time to dash back to your desk for the afternoon. Shows have been carefully scheduled to ensure that they start and finish within an hour so that you won’t be late back at work.

What’s more, if you add just R20 to the price of your ticket, you’ll get a sandwich and cool-drink of your choice delivered to the theatre for you.

With a variety of lunchtime venues on offer, you can pick your show by ’hood (which is closer – Hope or Darling Street?), mood, or generic preference. The lunchtime options provide audiences with a genre-crossing mix of performances to choose from – from music, to performance poetry, to illusion.

Here’s the tasty lunch-hour line-up:

THEATRE

  • Ashes to Ashes
    Friday 26 September. City Hall 3
    Award-winning actors Terry Norton and Mark Elderkin bring to life a script by renowned playwright Harold Pinter exploring the relationship between repression and desire.
  • The Year Of The Bicycle
    Friday 3 October. City Hall 3
    This 2013 Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award-winner returns to Cape Town after a sell-out run in Germany. Skipping from the lightness of play to the dark borders of loneliness, this is “a piece of theatre that will leave you breathless” (Cue).

FAMILY THEATRE

  • Narrative Dreams
    Thursday 25 September. City Hall 4
    Presented by Lereko Mfono in association with ASSITEJ SA, this is the tumultuous coming-of-age tale of two boys from very different worlds navigating their way into their teens.
  • Qhawe
    Monday 29 September. City Hall 4
    Told through a cast of puppets exquisitely conceived by the design team of Masiphumelele Community Theatre Group and produced by Handspring Trust, this visual spectacle is about finding the courage to face the demons of the past – and vanquish them.
  • Get Kraken
    Wednesday 1 October. City Hall 4
    Presented by Jon Keevy in association with ASSITEJ SA, this underwater adventure of unimaginable proportions was a deserving Standard Bank Ovation Award winner at the 2013 National Arts Festival.
  • Foursight
    Thursday 2 October. City Hall 4
    Written and performed by Kate Liquorish, directed by Kyla Davis, Foursight cracks open the shell of school violence by delving into the psychological motivations of a teenage killer a year after a traumatic event.
  • Jabulani And The Book
    Friday 3 October. City Hall 4
    Told through beautifully crafted animal masks and muppet-style puppets, this vibrant play brings to life the story of Jabulani and the Lion by Gcina Mhlophe.

PHYSICAL THEATRE

  • Being Norm
    Thursday 25 September. City Hall 2
    Although he is invisible to everyone around him, everyone and the universe are exceptionally visible to Norm as he goes about his day-to-day life. “Another exceptional performance by Richard Antrobus” (Cue – NAF 214), Being Norm will leave you in stitches of laughter.

PERFORMANCE POETRY

  • O.T.T.
    Friday 26 September. The German Club
    Energetic powerhouse Nkosinathi Gaar embarks on a high-octane interrogation of love, beauty, and how men and women really relate to each other.
  • #Why Not Poetry
    Thursday 2 October. The German Club
    Including a play, a reading, a powerful spoken word performance and visual collective poem recited in union, this production asks the peculiar, yet honest question, “why not poetry?”

EXPERIMENTAL COMEDY

  • Amateur Hour!
    Monday 29 September. Galloway Theatre
    Featuring 12 astonishing acts in under an hour, this loving celebration of rank amateurism and the remote outer reaches of show business is brought to us by the creators of The Epicene Butcher and Other Stories for Consenting Adults.

COMEDY DRAMA

  • The Bentleys Bettys
    Wednesday 1 October and Friday 3 October. Galloway Theatre
    Slip behind the scenes of a busy restaurant on a Friday night with four hot young waitresses who unintentionally unearth their stories as they attempt to juggle difficult customers, absent managers, food, flirting, alcohol and drugs.
  • Blowing Candles
    Thursday 2 October. City Hall 3
    Five women (in the 40+ age bracket) set out to prove that age is not a just a number in this humorous yet bitingly real look at a topical issue uppermost in South African minds – crime – and how we live with it.

COMEDY

  • Hutsetiket
    Tuesday 30 September. Galloway Theatre
    Showcasing the talents of Elizna Vermeulen, Hutsetiket (the Afrikaans word for “hashtag”) is an offbeat, one-woman comedy that takes a fresh perspective on the social media phenomenon.

MUSICAL COMEDY

  • The Brothers Streep
    Friday 29 September. The Dragon Room
    With their charming and catchy songs, and their sharp and satirical humour, the Brothers Streep bring their reinvented sell-out Grahamstown Fringe show to Cape Town – now with a full band.

DANCE PERFORMANCE

  • Mick Jagger is My Nightmare
    Sunday 28 September. The German Club
    Fresh from the Amsterdam Fringe – in this intense exhilarating dance performance the legendary frontman of the Rolling Stones tries to possess the body of Marius Mensink, a recent graduate of the Theatre Academy Maastricht.

MUSIC

  • Steve Newman & Ashish Joshi
    Sunday 28 September and Friday 3 October. The German Club
    The rhythmic percussive style of this much-loved instrumental duo mesmerises and transports fans both in South Africa and elsewhere.
  • The Phax Trio
    Tuesday 30 September and Friday 3 October. The Dragon Room
    Sultry and hair-raising Contra-Balkan, Hosh-Klezmer and Parisian-peepshow-inspired music from a powerful triumvirate – Eu(PH)onium and two s(AX)ophones – formed by the alumni principal players of the South African National Youth Orchestra, Shaun Acker, Andrea Fisher-Jeffes and Levi Alexander.
  • Philip Malan
    Thursday 2 October. The German Club
    A fingerstyle guitarist like no other, Malan uses the whole of the guitar to conjure up magical melodies, harmonies and bass lines, all at the same time.

ILLUSION

  • Sleight of Mouth
    Wednesday 1 October. City Hall 3
    Volunteers’ minds are read, sewing needles are consumed and cutlery is melted into pieces in this intimate performance by Marcel Oudejans of visual sleight-of-hand magic, mental illusion and modern-day mystery, punctuated by witty commentary.
  • Think Twice
    Thursday 2 October, Galloway Theatre
    Join Brendon Peel as he guides you on a journey through the miraculous and the magical. This extraordinary show that blends illusion, psychology, mentalism and memory techniques was a sell-out at the 2014 National Arts Festival.

LECTURE PERFORMANCE

  • Na-aap
    Sunday 28 September. City Hall 2
    This co-lab between De Klerk Oelofse, interactive designer/programmer Andries Odendaal, choreographer Ina Wichterich and director Jaco Bouwer brings to life a searching philosophical tale by Franz Kafka about an ape so good at playing human that he can fool even the professors.

 

GUIDE TO LUNCHTIME VENUES

Central and convenient to the max, you’ll find our lunchtime venues at:

  • City Hall: Corner Buitenkant and Darling streets, The Grand Parade, City Centre
  • The German Club: Roodehoek Terrace, off Hope Street, Gardens
  • The Dragon Room: Harrington Street, East City
  • Galloway Theatre: Waterfront Theatre School, Port Road, Waterfront

TO BOOK

SOCIAL MEDIA

By Andrew Germishuys

Founder of SAMDB | Actor | Armourer | Tech Enthusiast With over two decades in the film industry, I'm a seasoned actor and skilled armourer. I hold numerous certifications in acting and filmmaking, complemented by degrees and diplomas in IT and technology, giving me a unique blend of creative and technical expertise. When I'm not on set or in the workshop, you'll find me immersed in the world of gaming and VR, fuelling my passion for cutting-edge technology. Connect with me: X / Twitter Facebook Instagram Mastodon Threads Explore my work on SAMDB IMDb

Leave a comment