#MeToo
The Breach, Hampstead Theatre review - profoundly uncomfortable work that burns like iceMonday, 16 May 2022
Jude is the kind of girl that no-one would want to mess with – she can dance like a demon to Eric Clapton, skewer an ego in seconds and hit an apple from thirty feet with a knife. Yet in a play that’s so uncompromising it could give Neil LaBute a... Read more... |
Prima Facie, Harold Pinter Theatre review - Jodie Comer sears the stageThursday, 28 April 2022
National statistics tell us that, in the year ending September 2021, 41% of rape victims in England and Wales eventually withdrew their support for prosecution. That justice is not always blind may have something to do with this.Indeed, as the... Read more... |
After the End, Theatre Royal Stratford East review - suddenly relevant two-handerMonday, 07 March 2022
Mark was teased about the fallout shelter at the bottom of his garden by his co-workers (that wasn’t the only thing – every friendship group has a target for micro-aggressions) but his foresight pays off when terrorists explode a suitcase bomb on a... Read more... |
Inventing Anna, Netflix review - fake heiress saga outstays its welcomeMonday, 21 February 2022
Con artists in film or TV need to be clever, charming, mysterious or at least entertaining (for instance Leo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can or Michelle Dockery in the much-underrated Good Behaviour). Bafflingly, Anna Delvey, the notorious fake... Read more... |
Dave Chappelle: The Closer, Netflix review - race and class examinedWednesday, 20 October 2021
Say what you like about Dave Chappelle, but if nothing else he's an equal-opportunities offender, as his latest Netflix special, The Closer, proves. The last of his six specials for the network, all of which have drawn criticism – as well as... 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... |
Rose Plays Julie review - a sombre story of rape, adoption and a search for identitySaturday, 18 September 2021
Rose (Ann Skelly; The Nevers) is adopted. The name on her birth certificate is Julie and the possibility of a different identity – different clothes, different hair, different accent - beckons. If she could embrace this second life, she thinks, she... Read more... |
Oleanna, Arts Theatre review - Mamet on power and tragedyThursday, 29 July 2021
Before seeing this play, I decided to eat a steak. It seemed the right culinary equivalent to David Mamet, one of America’s most provocative and, at times, especially past times, red-blooded writers. This play, whose British premiere was at the... Read more... |
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World review - a harrowing tale vividly toldWednesday, 28 July 2021
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is the most harrowing film you are ever likely to watch, but don’t let that put you off. This was a documentary waiting to be made. It tells the story of a young beauty propelled into international stardom before... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Author Sam Mills on the phenomenon of the 'chauvo-feminist'Monday, 29 March 2021
Sam Mills’s writing includes the wondrously weird novel The Quiddity of Will Self, the semi-memoir Fragments of My Father, and Chauvo-Feminism (The Indigo Press), which was released in February 2021. Chauvo-Feminism is a non-fiction long-form essay... Read more... |
Katherine Angel: Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again review – the complexities of consentMonday, 08 March 2021
Katherine Angel borrows the title of her latest book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, from an essay by Foucault. The phrase parodies the supposed sexual liberation on the horizon in the ‘60s and ‘70s, picking apart the notion that sexuality and... Read more... |
Moxie review - likeable if confused high school comedyWednesday, 03 March 2021
A teen comedy with a thematic difference, Moxie has enough memorable moments to firmly establish comedian Amy Poehler as a director worth reckoning with in what is her second film, following Wine Country in 2019. Telling of the teenage Vivian's... Read more... |
