Barbara Thompson

THOMPSON, Barbara. (****-****).Actress and director. Directed and produced Hulluva Funeral. Performed in Not in Front of the Kids and Minstrel Scandals. (SACD 1974)

(1942-2000) Singer, cabaret and revue artist, actress, director and nightclub manager. Born in England, raised in Canada, she came to South Africa in the early 1960s. Sang in cafés and in musical productions, including the Brickhill-Burke show Minstrel Scandels in the 1970s. When His Majesty’s Theatre was closed down, she and her partner Ute Hasse opened No 58 in Hillbrow, as a nightclub and restaurant, moving to slightly larger premises a year later and calling it No 58 Too. Here she planned entertainment, nurtured new talent and directed and choreographed shows, for what became one of the best known and most influential clubs in Johannesburg in the 1980s. In 1989 she and Hasse left for Hawaii, but their business there failed and returned. From 1995 till 1999 she ran the Punchline Pub in the Johannesburg Civic Theatre. She moved to Cape Town, and died there in 2000.

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