★★★★★ “Her life emerges as a collage from which she seeks our final meaning. She reflects on releasing the need to be special, instead embracing “sitzfleisch” – to sit on your butt flesh, to endure, to simply be.  In doing so, Gamsu grants the audience permission to embrace themselves with equal abandon. My face wet with tears, I joined the thoroughly deserved standing ovation.”

“Vocally magnetic, her brassy voice is rich with years. Her gestures are precise and poised, beckoning us closer with every outstretched hand. There is an intensity to her storytelling that lingers long after each line.”  The Scoop

“Natalie Gamsu lays her experience on the stage, performing Laurika Rauch’s ‘Hot Gates’ – a song that, in Gamsu’s care, feels pertinent to the way so many of us are cheering for humanity right now, with great sorrow and an essential hope that can’t help but rise. She strikes every chord. She’s stunning.” In Review

“Gamsu possesses two remarkable instruments. The first is her singing voice, rich with ache and startling vulnerability, capable of moving from fragile intimacy to overwhelming force without sacrificing honesty. The second is her speaking voice, a storyteller’s instrument of astonishing precision. Every sentence carries texture. Every adjective shifts the emotional temperature of the room. She paints with language so vividly that audiences find themselves suspended between explosive laughter and quiet devastation, often within the same breath.” Beyond The Encore

★★★★½ “Performed in a way that dignifies Gamsu’s deepest secrets and induces the audience into bursts of laughter through a series of self-deprecating anecdotes and colourful descriptions of her favourite influential figures. Among the most memorable of these are her peculiar first casting agent in Cape Town and the eccentric directors of a cabaret club in Johannesburg. As the recital nears a close, Gamsu describes a fond, long-awaited love from her mother amid her battle with dementia before closing her performance with ‘A Song For You’, affording herself a well-deserved and heart-felt standing ovation.” Amelia Williamson, It’s On The House

“Shrapnel is a mosaic of things that have made Natalie Gamsu who she is. Her storytelling style is captivating. Her singing is powerful. And her collection of stories kept the audience laughing or awed or shocked.” Keith Gow, Theatre First

“Natalie Gamsu was once awakened by a zebra’s breath on her cheek in a marijuana plantation, and Shrapnel, an hour-long monologue frosted with music, gave us raw slices of her remarkable life, including growing up during South Africa’s repugnant apartheid years. Her version of being a musical theatre triple threat, she told us, was being fat, stoned and epileptic – yet she still bravely performed edgy cabaret in a police state. Life, she said, is partly about letting go of the need to be special. She might have let go, but she was the festival’s most potent performer.” John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald

“Gamsu’s show is charged, fierce, barbed, funny, ironic…our attention never wavers” Michael Brindley, Stage Whispers

“Gamsu is a delightfully engaging and entertaining artiste who can do it all – sing beautifully, with perfect diction, heart and conviction, and deliver evocative stories. She has us eating out the palms of her hands, hanging on to every word.” Alex First, The Blurb

“There’s silence in the theatre as detailed dark stories of the grief, suffering and violence on the streets of Johannesburg are recounted, but the solemn mood transverses to laughter as Gamsu quickly moves from one memory to the next, alleviating the chance of stagnation settling in. Audiences will learn that Gamsu loves sharing stories through cabaret and musical theatre. There will be laughter and tears but ultimately many may be moved perhaps because of what is going on in their own lives. This is a remarkable show” Mark Morellini, City Hub