There are few more familiar faces on the entertainment scene in Durban than Colin Penn. He has been entertaining the local clientele at weddings, nightclubs, parties, balls and dances for 56 years, and last year presented his 100th show, Please Take Your Seats, an amazing achievement!
I am a huge fan of the music he plays, all the classics from the 1940’s to 1970, but it is his tributes to the Greats….Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole….that he is best known for!
In recent years it has been easiest to catch him in Supper Cabarets that he puts on in venues around Durban, but now you can combine a High Tea at the Oyster Box with listening to Colin on the piano. Treats.
He does wonderful parties, and if you are looking for an evening to remember, where all generations will be able to recognise the music, he is a great supper act.
He is highly amusing, and combines a silver fox charm with a repartee which would make a nun blush, and giggle simultaneously, this is gentle entertainment from a bygone era.
Meanwhile at the Oyster Box while you are nibbling your scones it would be worth pausing to remember that you are in the company of a man who started on a piano in the early 1940’s. He played at the Mayor’s Ball, the Red Cross Ball, at the Los Angles Hotel, the Perthshire Hotel in Gillespie Street, and at Tiffany’s which boasted an international Cabaret and five stars. He has had a career which has taken him perhaps as far as a star can rise in Durban, and we should all be preserving him as a local treasure.
Colin Penn is a piece of Durban history, and from a personal point of view, chatting to him about the ‘old days’ in Durban is like opening the pages of a book. It makes me sad that I never got to see the places he played in, what days they must have been.
It is something to eat your tea, while he tickles the ivories, and you can almost see Petula Clark coming round the corner as she used to at Tiffany’s. My kind of fun, long may he play.
Colin Penn can be booked on 031 564 5135.