If you expect this to be a sweeping show of ethnic dancing and singing, you’d better avoid «Township Stories». Written and directed by the rising young star of South African film and theatre, Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom, this play is set in the townships of Johannesburg. This is no place for the soft-hearted! Unemployment, poverty, sex and violence make a highly explosive mix; rape, teenage pregnancies, domestic violence and armed robberies are part of everyday life. A serial killer stalks the streets, but that doesn’t terrify anyone here. It just makes the daily struggle for survival a little bit harder. And once more, love falls by the wayside. The outstanding performers of the South African State Theatre present this merciless world in expressive, intense images: contradictorily, authentically, breathtakingly. (esc)