A nice quiet dinner
HOW OFTEN don't we read that such and such a concert or other event in Durban has been cancelled due to lack of support? Durban people don't support the arts and entertainment, we're told. We're philistine; we're stick-in-the muds, stay-at-homes.
Yet the other night I was at an extravaganza down on the beachfront where they were packed in like sardines. The vibe was astonishing. And the show is apparently going to run on and on and on.
I confess I had never heard before of Madame Zingara's Theatre of Dreams, what they call a "dinner cirque". It was with apprehension that I learned it's an idea to go along in fancy dress, get really in the mood.
And that was indeed the thing to do. We shared a table with a cardinal (or he might have been a Papal Nuncio) who once played rugby for DHS Old Boys – pax vobiscum; also with a bearded WG Grace figure. I was in shamefully dowdy mufti but I believe the splendid legs of the short-skirted blonde who was with me more than made up for it.
Madame Zingara's has an emphasis on the zing. The action happens in a giant tent – made in the 1920s - that is all brocade, mirrors and stained glass windows. The waiters are a wraggle-taggle of cross-dressers and others who appear to have escaped from the foc'sle of a pirate ship. In an absolute chaos of lively music and breathtaking acrobatics over a central stage, the waiters charge in and out with a superb four-course dinner and fine wines.
The acrobats are from Russia and Eastern Europe. The singers are buxom local lasses who just about lift the tent with numbers that range from American jazz to Miriam Makeba's Click Song. Backsides like buffalo – voices like angels.
What a medley. The acrobatics are absolutely breathtaking. The blonde girl in a cage suspended high above the audience looks just like Marilyn Monroe. The double and treble-jointed dancers from Mongolia are simply awesome, their rhythmic contortions a sort of allegory of the process of evolution. The crowd were bowled over.
Where did all this come from? I really don't know. But Madame Zingara (whoever she might be) has hit on the right formula: Good food, good wines, good fun – coupled with real entertainment. There's something retro and refreshing about East European circus-style stuff. Nobody's bluffing anyone.
The audience sense it. They join in (in fact they took over the stage at the end). Give Durban real entertainment and the punters roll in – cardinals, cricketers and all. Give them over-the-hill rock stars and other second-raters and the punters will not be fooled. The shows are cancelled.
Here's a message for the impressarios.
Crotchgate continues
THE WEINERGATE (or Crotchgate) saga in Washington has moved on slightly. To recapitulate: a young female college student in Seattle received on Twitter – apparently from the account of Congressman Anthony Weiner – a photograph of a male crotch.
Questions arise. Does the crotch belong to Congressman Weiner? (He himself says he's not sure). How did the photograph get to the female student in Seattle? And was Congressman Weiner's Twitter account hacked, as he seems to believe?
Now the crotch photograph is available on the internet. It's a little startling but not too startling. It's a clothed crotch but not all that respectable a crotch. It's … no, let's leave it at that.
What's the next step? An identification parade on the steps of the Capitol? The mind Senor, she boggles!
Politico origins?
DO WE GET waterspouts off our coast? One has appeared off the coast of New South Wales, Australia- a tall, thin funnel of cloud and water spray, caused by a high layer of cold air blowing across water, and clashing with the warm air below.
According to this news snippet, various forms of sea life are often caught up in the funnel and then dumped a long way inland.
If we do have these waterspouts, do they reach Limpopo province? It could account for the sudden appearance of all kinds of weird political specimens.
Tailpiece
TWO fortune tellers are on the Durban beachfront.
"Lovely winter weather, isn't it?"
"Gorgeous. Reminds me of the winter of 2015."
Last word
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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