Some of South Africa’s most exciting young actors are set to explode onto the stage of the Civic Theatre this May in the return of Ben Elton’s smash hit, Popcorn.
The play, which is a brilliant sideswipe at the movie industry and at directors like Quentin Tarantino in particular, had audiences laughing and gasping in equal measure during its first outing here in 1999.
The members of this sizzling cast have made their names on both stage and screen. Kim Engelbrecht (one of the plays two leads, psychokiller, Scout), shot to fame as Lolly in Isidingo and is now a regular in top cop drama Zero Tolerance. Her fellow lead actor is Carl Beukes (her partner in crime, Wayne), another Isidingo favourite. Samantha Peo (nude model Brooke Daniels) wowed audiences with her lead roles in Chicago and Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Popcorn is an incredible play. It is brilliantly written and moves between comedy and unbelievable drama.
The play, which premiered in London in 1997, takes place in the home of film director Bruce Delamitri (played by actor and TV presenter Ashley Dowds). He has just won an Oscar for a film in the mould of Pulp Fiction or Natural Born Killers, when he, his model girlfriend (Peo) and his ex-wife and daughter are taken hostage by two fugitive killers – Scout and Wayne (Engelbrecht and Beukes). The pair could have walked straight out of one of Delamitri’s own films and their aim is make him confess on live TV that his movies have made them what they are. The resulting action is by turns comic, tense and deeply thought-provoking.
Other well-known names in the cast include actor and presenter Ashley Dowds, Martin Le Maitre, recently seen regularly as journalist Ivan Ferris in SABC 3’s Hard Copy and singer and actress Angela Kilian, who played Miss Dorothy Brown alongside Samantha Peo in Thoroughly Modern Millie and who has appeared in a host of TV and theatre productions including Isidingo and Cats.
Popcorn opens on 25th May at the Tesson Theatre at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre and runs till 1st July. Tickets are R175 from Computicket
A Note on Ben Elton
Ben Elton’s TV writing credits include The Young Ones, three Blackadder series with Richard Curtis, The Thin Blue Line and The Man from Auntie. He has written numerous bestselling novels including Stark, Gasping, Inconceivable, High Society, The First Casualty and Chart Throb. As a successful stand-up comedian in the UK in the 1980s he was at the forefront of the ‘new comedy’ movement. Popcorn began life as a novel – Elton’s fourth – which topped the UK best seller lists for many months. |
