race issues
Get Up, Stand Up!, Lyric Theatre review - knockout performance, undercooked bookFriday, 22 October 2021
Can we turn off the script and simply leave the music to do its soul-stirring bit? That's likely to be a not uncommon response to Get Up Stand Up!, which gives Bob Marley much the same biomusical treatment currently on view in Tina across... Read more... |
Rice, Orange Tree Theatre review - whip-smart, but unsure where it standsTuesday, 19 October 2021
“Careful, there’s a hole in the floor.” The warning’s an unusual one, passed along conscientiously by the stewards at the door of the tiny Orange Tree Theatre.The hole in question is long and angular and will soon be filled with water, stretching... Read more... |
White Noise, Bridge Theatre review - provocative if not always plausibleFriday, 15 October 2021
"I can't sleep": So goes the fateful opening line of White Noise, the Suzan-Lori Parks play disturbing enough to spark many a restless night in playgoers who are prepared to take its numerous provocations on board. To do so requires various... Read more... |
First Person: Andrea Levy's husband recalls her path toward becoming a novelistThursday, 07 October 2021
The opening sentence of Andrea’s 2010 historical novel The Long Song is in the voice of Thomas Kinsman, who is introducing the reader to his mother, July."The book you are now holding in your hand was born of a craving," Kinsman declares. "My mama... Read more... |
Extract: The Breaks by Julietta SinghWednesday, 06 October 2021
How do we mother “at the end of the world”? Among the ruins of late capitalism, climate catastrophe, and entrenched white state violence?Julietta Singh “admit[s] that at a conceptual level there is a crucial part of me that wants to throw in the... Read more... |
Curious, Soho Theatre review - a young playwright puts herself centre-stageMonday, 04 October 2021
Jasmine Lee-Jones has a hard act to follow – namely, herself. Her award-winning 2019 debut play, seven methods of killing kylie jenner, announced the arrival at the Royal Court of a blistering writing talent whose two sparring women made... Read more... |
Is God Is, Royal Court review – blister, flare and burn, baby, burnThursday, 16 September 2021
God is a tricky one. Or should that be One? And definitely not a He. So when she says take revenge, then vengeance is definitely not only hers, but ours too. American playwright Aleshea Harris’s dazzlingly satirical 2018 extravaganza is about two... Read more... |
Shorta review - Danish police dramaSaturday, 11 September 2021
This Danish police drama attempts to tackle the country’s uneasy relationship with the immigrants it’s allowed into its cities over the last 30 years. The result is a somewhat clumsy attempt at fusing social commentary with the visceral thrills of... Read more... |
Leopards, Rose Theatre, Kingston review - a no-thrill thriller about sex and powerThursday, 09 September 2021
Is it a thriller? Is it a character study? Leopards, Alys Metcalf’s two-hander about a middle-aged white charity executive – male – and a young job applicant of mixed race – female – goes under the colours of both, but falls short of either genre.A... Read more... |
Rockets and Blue Lights, National Theatre review - strong, but inconclusiveFriday, 03 September 2021
For more than three decades, playwright Winsome Pinnock has been at the forefront of new writing, often experimenting with form as well as documenting the lives of black Britons. Her new play’s original opening at the Royal Exchange Theatre in... Read more... |
Zola review - high-energy comic thriller tackles sex workThursday, 05 August 2021
It’s hard to imagine a movie more of its time than Zola, as it takes on sex, race, the glamorisation of porn and the allure of the ever-online world. For 90 minutes we are embedded in the lives of two young American sex workers and it’s a wild ride... Read more... |
Limbo review - quiet but volubleSaturday, 31 July 2021
Displacement looms large over every quietly impressive frame of Limbo, writer-director Ben Sharrock's magnetic film about a young Syrian man called Omar (Amir El-Masry) who finds himself biding his time in the remotest reaches of Scotland on the way... Read more... |
