politics
A House of Dynamite review - the final countdownTuesday, 07 October 2025
Armageddon is here again, as Kathryn Bigelow’s first film in eight years examines the minutes before a nuclear missile hits Chicago from multiple perspectives, finding no hope anywhere.Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) is our first witness,... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Idris Elba on playing a US President faced with a missile crisis in 'A House of Dynamite'Tuesday, 07 October 2025
Idris Elba has only just appeared as the British Prime Minister in the action comedy Heads of State (2025) – now he's portraying the American President in Kathryn Bigelow's tense political thriller A House of Dynamite.The White House Situation Room... Read more... |
Measure for Measure, RSC, Stratford review - 'problem play' has no problem with relevanceFriday, 03 October 2025
An opening video montage presents us with a rogues' gallery of powerful men who have done bad things. Plenty of the usual suspects appear to stomach-churning effect, but no ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, sentenced last week to five years in prison by... Read more... |
Joanna Pocock: Greyhound review - on the road againFriday, 26 September 2025
Joanna Pocock’s second full-length book, Greyhound, tells the story of a single journey made and remade. In 2006, after the death of her sister and several miscarriages, Pocock travelled 2,300 miles from Detroit to Los Angeles by bus. She replicates... Read more... |
Happyend review - the kids are never alrightFriday, 19 September 2025
Perhaps only in Japan might it be thought the height of delinquency for a bunch of schoolkids is to spend the night sneaking back to school, climbing in and hanging out in a music room. Happyend, a Japanese teen-rebellion story, shows its central... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Suranne Jones on 'Hostage', power pants and politicsFriday, 29 August 2025
If she decided to run for election, Suranne Jones would probably stand a good chance of winning. The Chadderton-born actress and producer has been a driving figure in British television ever since she became known for playing Karen McDonald on... Read more... |
As You Like It: A Radical Retelling, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review - breathtakingly audacious, deeply shockingMonday, 25 August 2025
There is, let’s be honest, a certain self-congratulatory self-satisfaction among some particularly well-heeled sections of the Edinburgh International Festival audience, event-goers who’ve forked out a fortune to be fed high culture carefully... Read more... |
Evita, London Palladium review - even more thrilling the second time roundWednesday, 30 July 2025
Would Jamie Lloyd's mind-bending revival of Evita win through twice in four weeks, I wondered to myself, paraphrasing a Tim Rice lyric from his 1978 collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber?This is the first Lloyd Webber musical I ever saw in its... Read more... |
Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all aboard for some old-school comedy mishapsTuesday, 22 July 2025
Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema. Its extraordinary locations, caught just before London’s Docklands were transformed forever, speaks to a past world. But the... Read more... |
The Estate, National Theatre review - hugely entertaining, but also unconvincingSunday, 20 July 2025
The first rule for brown people, says the main character – played by BAFTA-winner Adeel Akhtar – in this highly entertaining dramedy, is not to let white people know how badly non-whites treat each other. This provocative statement comes towards the... Read more... |
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire review - a mysterious silenceSaturday, 19 July 2025
A glamorous black woman sits in a Forties bar under a Vichy cop’s gaze, cigarette tilted at an angle, till two male companions join her in clandestine conversation. The woman is Suzanne Césaire (Zita Hanrot), an influential Martinican journalist and... Read more... |
Poor Clare, Orange Tree Theatre review - saints cajole us sinnersFriday, 18 July 2025
What am I, a philosophical if not political Marxist whose hero is Antonio Gramsci, doing in Harvey Nichols buying Comme des Garçons linen jackets, Church brogues and Mulberry shades? It’s 1987 and I do wear it well though…Chiara Atik’s comedy... Read more... |
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