Another accolade was heaped upon East London actor Ryan de Villiers at the Joburg Theatre on Monday night, when he won a coveted Naledi theatre award for best breakthrough performance.
This comes after De Villiers, 26, scooped the Fleur du Cap award for best male lead in a musical in March.
Both gongs are for his dynamic performance as Miss Trunchbull in the musical stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story Matilda.
The show was staged at Johannesburg’s Montecasino and Cape Town’s Artscape theatres last year and early this year, before touring Singapore.
“Winning the best breakthrough performance Naledi was such an honour, especially because the award is dedicated to the late Brett Goldin, who was a breakthrough performer himself,” said Stirling High and Rhodes University graduate De Villiers.
“I think it’s such an important award to recognise emerging performers and give them a platform to produce more work.”
Goldin was a young actor who was murdered in Cape Town in 2006 along with his friend, fashion designer Richard Bloom.
The award was presented to De Villiers – who is the son of East London teacher Annette de Villiers and Green Scorpions Eastern Cape director Div de Villiers – by Goldin’s mother Denise Goldin and veteran theatre personality Des Lindberg.
The actor, who also recently shot a yet-to-be-disclosed feature film, described the 15th annual Naledi Theatre Awards as “a stupendous night with the most brilliant entertainment”.
“My heart was thumping like it would in a Tom and Jerry cartoon when I heard my name being called out, and I couldn’t stop shaking.”
De Villiers, who has ratcheted up 150 performances as the fat suit-wearing, hilariously diabolical Miss Trunchbull, will head to China next month with the hit Pieter Toerien production for a 14-city tour.
“We are going for about seven months and will be performing in the most magnificent theatres all around the country, including the one in Guangzhou which was designed by the extraordinary [famed Iraqi-British architect] Zaha Hadid.”
The musical production of The Color Purple collected seven 2019 Naledi awards...