tue 01/07/2025

class system

Leaving

Kristin Scott Thomas possesses an altogether singular beauty: classical yet faintly wistful, intimidating at times but equally capable of enormous warmth. And because this English rose has professionally blossomed not just in the Anglo-American...

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Peckham Finishing School For Girls, BBC Three

We know the format: take a bunch of posh, privileged types - held up as examples of cluelessness when it comes to how “ordinary” people live by privileged, overpaid TV executives - and plonk them down in the middle of some dodgy council estate....

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The Late Middle Classes, Donmar Warehouse

Helen McCrory and Laurence Belcher: upper-middle-class characters and their difficulties with communication

The late Simon Gray, who died in 2008, lived a ragged, bruised and battering life. I usually think of him as the John Prescott of playwrights, except that he was miles more articulate, and eventually rewarded by a CBE rather than a peerage. Anyway,...

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Posh, Royal Court Theatre

When artistic director Dominic Cooke took up his new post at this venue in 2007, he said that he wanted “to look at what it means to be middle class, what it means to have power, what it means to have wealth”. Although this comment caused a lot of...

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The Blind Side

John Lee Hancock's film is a fairly straightforward adaptation of Michael Lewis's biographical book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. Michael Oher is virtually homeless when Leigh Anne spots him wandering the streets of suburban Memphis one...

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Dave Gorman, Hammersmith Apollo

Dave Gorman, it could be said, invented a genre of comedy. His reality-based documentary tales - about hunting down people with the same name or finding unique Google searches - were meticulously researched and generously illustrated; he was the...

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The Power of Yes, National Theatre

David Hare is one of the giants of contemporary British theatre. His skill is to be the Balzacian social secretary who records the mood of the day. So his recent work has examined the state of the nation in a poetic rather than a literal way,...

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Orphans, Soho Theatre

Theatre is the art of storytelling, and the best stories are those that constantly change their shape. In Dennis Kelly's storming new play, Orphans, which wowed critics and audiences when it opened in Edinburgh in August, the narrative morphs and...

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Mother Courage and Her Children, National Theatre

Bertolt Brecht was probably made for them: Deborah Warner directing Fiona Shaw in Mother Courage and her Children is as desirable a coupling, surely, as the Warner-Shaw Richard II or Happy Days, both immensely satisfying showcases for the director's...

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