REVIEWS FOR TIM PLEWMAN

“Whoever it was who thought of transcribing [Rob Becker’s] Broadway hit into terms readily recognised by South Africans and to deliver them in a broad South African accent, deserves a medal. I dare say the original format would have raised from me a smile, or a chuckle or two. The localised version had me in stitches.

This is, of course, almost entirely due to the presentation of Tim Plewman and his director, Rex Garner, past masters in the art of setting an audience a-roar”
– The Citizen

“Tim Plewman has become a household name with his one-man show Defending The Caveman. For once, the term ‘smash hit’ isn’t mere PR speak.…
It has been credited with saving the Alhambra Theatre complex from closure. It has brought a whole new audience to the theatre and they are loving it”
– Janine Walker, The Star

“Laugh? I neeeeaaaarly died… Plewman is very funny in his lekker ou comparison of male emotional inarticulacy with female volubility”
– Len Ashton, The Argus

“This is a play about dislocation, about an historical turn of the wheel that has left men without self-esteem.
Plewman fights back. His technique is to involve the audience in the psychological and emotional issues that engage his mind, especially the re-education and retraining of today’s women to accept male uniqueness: men’s lavatorial schoolboy humour, their loyalty and their combative independence…

Here is the artistry of the human heart conveyed in language that can only make you laugh till you cry”
– Mary Jordan, Business Day

“Tim Plewman has taken Rob Becker’s hit battle-of-the-sexes one-man comedy and made it his own. To hundreds of thousands of South Africans, he is The Caveman”
– Christina Kennedy, The Citizen

INTERNATIONAL REVIEWS OF THE PLAY

“Caveman is a nationwide comic phenomenon!”
– Ralph Blumenthal, The New York Times

“Be prepared to laugh!”
– Peter Felicia, Theater Week

“Caveman should be seen by anyone who wants to understand the opposite sex”
– John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

“Hysterically funny! As someone who has covered the theatre off and on for a couple of decades, I’m as jaded as the next journalist, but I have to say that Becker made me laugh until tears rolled down my cheeks. People were holding their sides. The woman sitting next to me laughed until she choked…

Becker proceeds, with compassion as well as humour, to outline the idea that there are real reasons for our differences, possibly even genetic reasons whose origins are buried in the millennia of human evolution; and instead of judging the opposite sex according to one’s own gender-based standards, it is possible to recognise the differences and accept them without hostile judgment…

Couples who were arguing before the performance stroll out into the night afterwards holding hands. You know there’s going to be some serious snuggling going on when they get home”
– Leslie Bennetts, Variety

“One of the funniest evenings of my life!”
– Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Are The Way They Are

“Outrageously funny! Caveman explores all of the things that make men and woman fight, laugh and love”
– Deborah Bradley, Dallas Morning News

“When I saw Defending The Cavemen, I knew I had a new homework assignment for my couples in therapy”
– Anna Beth Benningfield, president of the American Association For Marriage And Family Therapy

“If good theatre is supposed to show an audience something of themselves, then Defending The Caveman is platinum-plus. Both sexes roar with pleasure in recognition of their own foibles and each other’s flaws”
– Jack Zink, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“Humorous insights about contemporary feminism, masculine sensitivity and the erogenous zone. A genuine word-of-mouth hit, it shows no sign of fading”
– Stephen Schaefer, New York Post

“Hilarious! Probes the male mystique with a well-aimed spear”
– Gerald Nachman, San Francisco Chronicle

“We’ve had grandparents, parents and their married children come to the show together, people in work boots sitting next to college professors, and many many marriage counsellors. What blows me away is how touched people say they are. Many women have told me that, thanks to the show, they’ve fallen in love with their husbands all over again. Men have told me that it explains them to their spouses in ways they’ve never quite been able to articulate before…
I think the Caveman gives people a way to understand themselves and their partners while they’re laughing, and I think some healing takes place when a couple sits in a darkened theatre, laughing with hundreds of other couples, realising they’re not alone”
– Rob Becker, original writer and US performer of Defending The Caveman