sexism
In the Middle review - the true grit of grassroots refereesMonday, 03 April 2023
In the Middle profiles 10 football officials who referee and run the line of lower-league games in south-west London and north-east Surrey. Pondering what drives these apparently sane individuals to do such an onerous job, director-producer Greg... Read more... |
A Streetcar Named Desire, Almeida Theatre review - Patsy Ferran rises above fussy stagingFriday, 13 January 2023
It’s a long way from the dank chill of an English winter to the stultifying heat of a New Orleans summer, but we’ve been here before at this venue. Five years on from their award-winning Summer And Smoke, Rebecca Frecknall is back in the director’s... Read more... |
Legally Blonde, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - a joyous Gen-Z musical makeoverWednesday, 25 May 2022
The 2001 Reese Witherspoon-starring film Legally Blonde, upon which Heather Hach, Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin’s peppy Broadway musical is based, was something of a Trojan horse: a bubblegum-pink comedy with a feminist spine.Now Lucy Moss, co-... Read more... |
Tom Fool, Orange Tree Theatre review - testing family valuesTuesday, 22 March 2022
It’s not hard to see, watching Tom Fool at the Orange Tree Theatre, why Franz Xaver Kroetz is one of Germany’s most staged playwrights.Born in Munich in 1946, he’s known for unflinching portrayals of poverty and what it does to people. Directed... 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... |
Jimmy Carr, Palace Theatre review - rape gags and risible claimsSaturday, 19 June 2021
What to make of Jimmy Carr? He’s a fantastic gag writer and experienced stand-up who has made a hugely successful career on television. And yet... as Terribly Funny makes clear, you have to share what he calls his dark and edgy humour - or, as he... Read more... |
Elinor Cleghorn: Unwell Women review – misunderstanding and misdiagnosisMonday, 14 June 2021
I’m one of the women in the pages of Elinor Cleghorn’s new history of the female body, Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World. I’ve dealt with strange chronic pain throughout my early twenties. Still, I’ve always felt... Read more... |
La traviata, Opera Holland Park review – a revival in rude healthMonday, 07 June 2021
Loudly and painfully, the consumptive Violetta wheezes before we hear a single note. Her pitiful gasping for the breath that deserts her precedes the prelude to Opera Holland Park’s La traviata; the same effect ushers in Act Three. At first I... Read more... |
Promising Young Woman, Sky Cinema review - Emerald Fennell's brilliant directorial debutMonday, 19 April 2021
After winning a couple of Baftas, and with five nominations at next week’s Oscars, Promising Young Woman comes surging in on the crest of a wave. Emerald Fennell, already known for acting roles in The Crown and Call the Midwife and for showrunning... 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... |
The Columnist review - taking out the trollsFriday, 12 March 2021
There aren't many unforgettable moments in The Columnist, but one occurs when the eponymous Dutch journalist Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) clambers from the skylight of her house and, unseen by her middle-aged neighbour (Rein Hofman), who's doing DIY... 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... |
