politics
It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure, Soho Theatre review - disability-led comedy hits hardMonday, 01 May 2023
Just when you’ve relaxed a little, privilege duly checked and confident that you won’t be guilt-tripped for nipping into that disabled loo a few years ago at the National (c’mon, the interval was nearly over and needs must), FlawBored drop a bomb... Read more... |
The Diplomat, Netflix review - can London's new American ambassador prevent World War Three?Saturday, 29 April 2023
Does the “special relationship” really exist? Judging by Netflix’s sparky new political drama, yes it does, with London-based CIA agent Eidra Graham (Ali Ahn) going out of her way to spell out the unique intelligence-sharing arrangements between the... Read more... |
The Good Person of Szechwan, Lyric Hammersmith review - wild ride in hyperreality slides byMonday, 24 April 2023
As the UK undergoes yet another political convulsion, this time concerning the threshold for ministers being shitty to fellow workers, it is apt that Bertolt Brecht’s parable about the challenges of being good in a dysfunctional society hits London... Read more... |
Pacifiction review - portending hell in paradiseMonday, 24 April 2023
Paranoia seeps into paradise in Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, a scathing critique of French colonialism on the Polynesian island of Tahiti. Acting on rumours that his overlords are about to resume nuclear testing in the region and fearing his... Read more... |
Under the Black Rock, Arcola Theatre review - political thriller turns soapySaturday, 11 March 2023
“Darkly comic thrillers” (as they like to say) set in Ireland tracking how families, or quasi-families, fall apart under pressure are very much in vogue just now. Whether The Banshees of Inisherin will garner the Oscars haul it hardly deserves... Read more... |
Disbelief - 100 Russian Anti-War Poems (ed. Julia Nemirovskaya) review - writing battle-linesThursday, 23 February 2023
On 24th February 2022, when Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation”, life in Ukraine changed abruptly and in a brutal fashion. Soon the impact of the war was felt around the world – and not only in rising food and energy prices. Yet... Read more... |
Standing at the Sky's Edge, National Theatre review - razor-sharp musical with second-act woesTuesday, 21 February 2023
Buildings can hold memories, the three dimensions of space supplemented by the fourth of time. Ten years ago, I started every working week with a meeting in a room that, for decades, had been used to conduct autopsies – I felt a little chill... Read more... |
Sylvia, Old Vic review - great leads, rambling storyFriday, 17 February 2023
For many years, I would ask groups of students to vote in elections because “it’s important to honour those who gave up so much to ensure that the likes of us can”. Some would nod, others would shrug, a few might have inwardly scoffed – too... Read more... |
Smoke, Southwark Playhouse review - dazzling Strindberg updateMonday, 06 February 2023
A play’s title can be an almost arbitrary matter – there’s no streetcar but plenty of desire in that one for example – and it might have crossed Kim Davies’ mind to call her play Ms Julie, since it is a reimagining of August Strindberg’s... Read more... |
Watch on the Rhine, Donmar Warehouse review - Lillian Hellman's 1940 play is still asking awkward questionsWednesday, 11 January 2023
We’re reminded, in a grainy black and white video framing device, that, as late as the summer of 1941, the USA saw World War II as just another European war. As brilliantly illustrated in Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America, not only was such... Read more... |
Stonehouse, ITV review - history repeats itself as farceThursday, 05 January 2023
A disclaimer in the opening credits confessed that some scenes in this three-part history of disgraced Labour MP John Stonehouse had been “imagined for dramatic purposes”, but there was no need. The man’s life story fell comfortably into the “you... Read more... |
Album of the Year 2022: Hercules & Love Affair - In AmberFriday, 16 December 2022
It’s been a shit year. Global horrors from Kiev to Karachi and Tehran to Texas all somehow feeling too close for comfort, and even closer to home heatstroke, frostbite, floods, strikes, impoverishment, the grinding realisation that pestilence is a... Read more... |
