| What: The Glass Menagerie / Speelgoed van glas Where: Baxter Flipside, Cape Town When: The Glass Menagerie is on July 31 to August 7, 2025. Speelgoed van glas is on August 8 to 16, 2025 Directed, translated and designed by: Nico Scheepers Cast: Includes Anna-Mart van der Merwe, Carla Smith, Ben Albertyn and Mark Elderkin Tickets: R160-R210 at Webtickets Age restriction: 13 with parental guidance |
Fantastic news is the staging of The Glass Menagerie / Speelgoed van glas in the Baxter Flipside in July/August 2025. Speelgoed van glas is an award-winning production, adapted and translated into Afrikaans by Nico Scheepers from Tennessee Williamsโ The Glass Menagerie. The production premiered to rave reviews at Woordfees and then travelled to festivals. For the Baxter season, Scheepers has translated his adaption into English. This has enabled him to retain the essence of his adaption, which contextualizes the family as an Afrikaans family. Intrigued? Read on for more:
Award winning The Glass Menagerie / Speelgoed van glas in August at The Baxter, starring Anna-Mart van der Merwe
Speelgoed van glas, Nico Scheepersโ award-winning reworking and translation of Tennessee Williamsโ English masterpiece, gets an interesting new look at The Baxter in August, performed in English and in Afrikaans.
Directed, translated and designed by Nico Scheepers, the star-studded cast includes Anna-Mart van der Merwe, Carla Smith, Ben Albertyn and Mark Elderkin.
Retaining the name The Glass Menagerie, this English version is Nico Scheepersโ new re-translation of his original Afrikaans interpretation and will be on stage from July 31 to August 7, 2025, in the Baxter Flipside.
This will be followed by the much-discussed standalone Afrikaans version, from August 8 to 16, 2025.
The characters unravel the intricate web of love and loss, spun by a matriarch to keep her family together at all costs โ a web from which they all long to escape. The Glass Menagerie is an intense, heart-wrenching tale of separation, and a gripping exploration of fragility, longing and the fallibility of family.
Speelgoed van glas debuted at the Toyota Stellenbosch Woordfees last year and was awarded in the following Woordtrofees categories: Best Play, Best Director (Nico Scheepers), Best Supporting Actress (Carla Smith), Best Supporting Actor (Mark Elderkin).
โThe events revolve around a family with an absent father. Amanda Wingfield (Anna-Mart van der Merwe) does her best to keep her family together and to pretend that things are going better than they are, but over the course of the play we witness the attempts of her children, Laura (Carla Smith) and Tom (Ben Albertyn) to escape their situation and their motherโs grip,โ writes Marina Griebenow in her review for INK.
Director, Nico Scheepers, remarked that the play gets better with every performance. He is excited to bring a production that he is so proud of to one of the leading theatres in South Africa. He tells us a little more about the new English retranslation and the Afrikaans version.
โI think the interesting thing is that I couldnโt just use the original American English text, because I had completely adapted the Afrikaans production to the nineties in South Africa, with an Afrikaans family that has an English guest visit,โ explains Nico.
โTherefore, I had to translate the Afrikaans text back into English using my adaptation with all the references and language as the foundation. I thought the most successful way to do it in English was to still treat them as an Afrikaans family. The actors speak with Afrikaans accents and there are still Afrikaans words in the production, so that it is still authentically South African. They are a South African family, who speak a kind of โAnglikaansโ thereby making the English they use serve almost as subtitles for English audience members. It was the only way that I could see the adaptation working. And even though everyone speaks English, Jim (Mark Elderkin) who arrives in the second half still feels like an English person visiting an Afrikaans family.โ
For the Afrikaans interpretation, the ensemble remains faithful to the production that has enjoyed great success at the various arts festivals, says Nico.
โIt is a privilege to be able to do a production so many times in a row, and to watch how the actorsโ interpretations deepen and simmer. Their last performance at Innibos recently was probably the best performance of Speelgoed van glas to date,โ says Nico.
Speelgoed van glas had reviewers enthralled.
โSpeelgoed van glas is not light entertainment, but it is brilliant,โ writes journalist and photographer Neels Jackson, who captured breathtaking close-ups of Lauraโs glass animals.
โNico Scheepers has subtly adapted Williamsโ Menagerie,โ writes Laetitia Pople, Netwerk24โs arts editor, in her review. She attributes high praise to everything from role-playing and visual representation to the directorโs understanding of โthe human heart and the place of dreams in daily life. And that a meaningful life must be fought for.โ
Marina Griebenow likens the production to a magic spell.
โIt is clear that Speelgoed van glas, like Lauraโs delicate and precious glass animals, is a gem that one will cherish and preserve for a long time. I look forward to seeing it again in Cape Town.โ
Booking for The Glass Menagerie from July 31 to August 7 or Speelgoed van glas August 8 to 16. 2025, at 7.30pm or Saturday matinees at 3.30pm, is through Webtickets online or at Pick n Pay stores. This is a Toyota Stellenbosch Woordfees production, supported by NATi and the Baxter Theatre. There is an age restriction of 14 years and parental guidance is advised.
The Glass Menagerie
August 31 July to 7, 2025, The Baxter Flipside
Tickets: R160 to R210 at Webtickets
Age restriction: 13 with parental guidance
Speelgoed van glas
8 to 16 August at The Baxter Flipside
Time: Weeknights at 19:30 and Saturday afternoon at 15:30
Tickets: R160 to R210 at Webtickets
Age restriction: 13 with parental guidance
โณ Anna-Mart van der Merwe – centre in the Glass Menagerie / Speelgoed van glas is on in the Baxter Flipside, Cape Town, July to August 2025, an adaption and reworking of Tennessee Williamsโ The Glass Menagerie, by Nico Scheepers; performed in two versions – English and Afrikaans. Sponsored content. Images by Gys Loubser. Supplied.
