mental health
The Glass Menagerie, Duke of York's Theatre review - memories flare and fadeWednesday, 01 June 2022
The stage is cluttered with objects; a pianola sits stage left; a large cabinet, soon to be revealed as a display case for tiny glass ornaments, dominates the centre. A man, gaunt, in his 40s perhaps, wanders among this stuff.He is our narrator (... Read more... |
First Person: Christina McMaster - seeking musical cures for modern malaiseSaturday, 28 May 2022
In 2020, during a gentle easing of lockdown restrictions, I was asked to play for the Culture Clinic sessions at Kings Place, a creative initiative where small groups of up to six people could book a ticket for a private, personally tailored... Read more... |
For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, Royal Court review - Black joy, pain, and beautyTuesday, 19 April 2022
The title is so long that the Royal Court’s neon red lettering only renders the first three words, followed by a telling ellipsis. But lyrical new play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy lives up to its weighty... Read more... |
Anyone Can Whistle, Southwark Playhouse review - full-on bonkersFriday, 08 April 2022
Musicals don't get madder than Anyone Can Whistle, the 1964 Broadway flop from onetime West Side Story and Gypsy collaborators Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents which makes history of sorts at Southwark Playhouse as the first Sondheim show to be... Read more... |
Marianne Eloise: Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking review - bargaining with the devilWednesday, 23 March 2022
No mental health condition has become quite as kitsch as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Its tacky shorthands – the hand washing, the germaphobia, the clean freaks – have made their way into everything, from Buzzfeed listicles to The Big Bang Theory... Read more... |
Conundrum, Young Vic review - inscrutable and ungraspableTuesday, 01 February 2022
Conundrum is a tricky play. Written and directed by Paul Anthony Morris, founder of Crying in the Wilderness Productions, it’s an extended meditation on Blackness and what it means to live in a racist society. Anthony Ofoegbu is the star of the show... Read more... |
Sessions, Soho Theatre review – intense, but inconclusiveSaturday, 13 November 2021
After lockdown, the stage monologue saved British theatre. At venue after venue, cash-strapped companies put single actors into simple playing spaces to deliver good stories for audiences that just wanted to visit playhouses again. But this theatre... Read more... |
Ruth Ozeki: The Book of Form and Emptiness review - where the objects speakFriday, 05 November 2021
“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Ruth Ozeki’s latest novel takes its name from a Buddhist heart sutra that meditates on reality and questions of human existence. It’s a big question for a big book. A Zen priest as well as a teacher, writer,... Read more... |
10 Questions for writer Lucia Osborne-CrowleyTuesday, 28 September 2021
Anyone familiar with psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s bestseller The Body Keeps the Score (2014) will recognise the ghost of his title in Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s My Body Keeps Your Secrets. His book is an essential text for understanding the... Read more... |
Shining City, Theatre Royal Stratford East review - occasional sluggishness alongside a true star turnMonday, 27 September 2021
When Brendan Coyle, playing a modestly magnetic widower and sales rep called John in this revival of Conor McPherson's 2004 play Shining City, first appears on stage, he looks thoroughly bewildered. His eyes dart back and forth as he initially... Read more... |
Oliver Sacks: His Own Life review - a complex portrait of a complex manMonday, 27 September 2021
It’s well worth tracking down one of the September 29 special cinema screenings of Ric Burns' lovingly made documentary portrait of the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, or seeking it out online. Famous for his vivid, insightful descriptions of... Read more... |
The Lodger, Coronet Theatre review - underdeveloped family dramaTuesday, 21 September 2021
The Coronet Theatre is a beautiful space – it’s a listed Victorian building, and the bar’s like something out of a film about Oscar Wilde. Unfortunately, Robert Holman’s The Lodger, a new play about family and trauma, doesn’t live up to its... Read more... |
