feminism
RBG review - a compelling, restrained insightMonday, 07 January 2019
Very few could have predicted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg becoming a cultural icon, least of all herself. A quiet, studious, first-generation American girl who broke down boundaries, not with force, but with a reasoned reproach and a calm demeanour... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2018: Janelle Monáe - Dirty ComputerMonday, 31 December 2018
Janelle Monáe had already established herself as pop’s next great innovator with The ArchAndroid and Electric Ladyland, two albums full of earworms, high production and retro-futuristic lyrics. This all-too-brief musical career seemed in jeopardy... Read more... |
Lizzie review - murder most meticulousThursday, 13 December 2018
The story of Lizzie Borden, controversially acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892, has been explored many times on screen and in print (there’s even an opera and a musical version, not to... Read more... |
Hole, Royal Court review - anger is not quite enoughThursday, 06 December 2018
Actor Ellie Kendrick is a familiar face on television, but it's only as a writer that she reveals the depth of her rage against the world. At least, that's what it feels like. After starring in the BBC's The Diary of Anne Frank while still at school... Read more... |
Suspiria review - kindly, slow-motion grand guignolThursday, 15 November 2018
The first Suspiria was a sensation, and spectacularly, monomaniacally new. Its young heroine Susie Bannon’s ride from an innately hostile airport through eldritch woods in which a panicked girl ran from her destination, the Markos Academy of Dance,... Read more... |
The Hoes, Hampstead Theatre review - sex and drink and grimeSaturday, 10 November 2018
Because of the #MeToo movement, and the revival of feminist protest, the theme of sisterhood now has a much stronger cultural presence than at the start of the decade. It seems to be a great time to be a female playwright, and Ifeyinwa Frederick's... Read more... |
Stories, National Theatre review - comic conception capersThursday, 18 October 2018
In 2017, playwright Nina Raine's Consent, an excellent National Theatre play about lawyers and rape victims, was hugely successful, winning a West End transfer, as well as generating a lot of discussion about gender politics. Her follow up, Stories... Read more... |
Modern Couples, Barbican review - an absurdly ambitious survey of artist loversSaturday, 13 October 2018
What an ambitious project! Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde looks at over 40 couples or, in some cases, trios whose love galvanised them into creative activity either individually or in collaboration.The best thing about the... Read more... |
The Bisexual, Channel 4 review - joyless comedy dramaThursday, 11 October 2018
Write about what you know, every nascent novelist is told. So you can't fault writer/director/actor Desiree Akhavan, Iranian-American creator of Appropriate Behaviour (2015) and The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018), which explore divergent... Read more... |
The Sweet Science of Bruising, Southwark Playhouse review - boxing cleverSaturday, 06 October 2018
There are not that many plays about sport, but, whether you gamble on results or not, you can bet that most of them are about boxing. And often set in the past. Joy Wilkinson's superb new drama, The Sweet Science of Bruising, comes to the Southwark... Read more... |
Skate Kitchen review - sisterhood in the skate parkThursday, 27 September 2018
“Let’s get a clip, Long Island.” One New York skateboarder encourages another, who’s from the ‘burbs, to show off ollies, pop shuvits and kick-flips for a YouTube video. But hang on: “There are too many penises in the way.” This is a posse of young... Read more... |
Killing Eve, BBC One review - the dying gameSunday, 16 September 2018
It may be a sign of the times that the two lead performances in Killing Eve are female, with Jodie Comer fizzing hyperactively as shape-shifting assassin Villanelle and Sandra Oh (from Grey’s Anatomy) as British intelligence officer Eve Polastri (... Read more... |
