On Stage: Small space, big ideas

Entering the Rosebank Theatre from a quiet side street, you'll see a tiny box office framed by an industry of merry lights from which a pixie-like woman's face peeps.

At the door, waiting to welcome theatre-goers, are the owner, actor and producer Nicholas Ellenbogen, and Luke, his son.

The Ellenbogens launched this venue last year, with the support of writer Alexander McCall Smith. According to the programme, it offers a platform where "upcoming artists can showcase their talent and established artists can delight audiences in an intimate, 50-seater setting".

In the little green foyer, you can buy good wine, whisper dramatically and do some people-spotting.

The 1989 classic Curl Up & Dy e, a satire by Sue Pam-Grant, directed by UCT lecturer Christopher Weare with final-year students, is showing now.

The play, set in a hair salon in Hillbrow, "shines light on the grey areas of Johannesburg which remained untouched by apartheid where black, white and coloured people lived together".

The areas might have remained untouched but the people didn't. It starts slowly but fast finds its own rhythm, the young actors sparking off each other with perfect timing.

The script has recently been tightened by Pam-Grant and it works well.

There's poor old Rolene (Nicole Fortuin), the main hairdresser in the salon, struggling with "white fear" and a violent husband. Other characters include Mrs Dubois (Maggie Gericke), a lonely, racist woman, terrified of change, black people and life beyond her limited horizons.

Miriam (Sive Gubangxa) is your archetypical cleaner, underpaid, at the bottom of the pecking order. Charmaine Francesca Michel has a plum role as the drug-addicted prostitute (Charmaine) and portrays her with pathos.

There's also Dudu (Shonisani Masutha), an educated nurse with aspirations, who doesn't keep quiet when the conversation in the salon becomes racist. It was when Dudu spoke up that a white member of the audience became furious, objecting loudly at what he interpreted as reverse racism against whites.

After the show he was so worked up by it all he created a small scene in the foyer. Perhaps he was drunk but the actors' performances, the script, and direction were all so powerful, maybe he could not distinguish between a play and real life. For some, nothing has changed.

• On until tomorrow. The Rosebank Theatre, 16 Alma Road, 074-101-5066