feminism
Listed: Suffragettes portrayedTuesday, 06 February 2018
It was both astonishing and depressingly unsurprising that Suffragette, Sarah Gavron’s feature about the insurgent foot soldiers of the campaign for women’s suffrage, was the first fictionalised film specifically about the movement. There are more... Read more... |
DVD: In BetweenTuesday, 06 February 2018
In Between didn’t get nearly enough attention on its cinema release in the UK last autumn, hampered perhaps by its nothingy title and a synopsis that can make it sound like it will be a worthy evening out when in fact it’s anything but. One of the... Read more... |
CD: Dream Wife - Dream WifeWednesday, 31 January 2018
It’s hard to be sure if Rakal, Bella and Alice from Dream Wife are a rock’n’roll band or a girl gang with guitars. Either way, their debut album has got some cracking Riot Grrrl-flavoured tunes and a stridently feminist, in-your-face attitude. There... Read more... |
Little Women, BBC One review - life during wartime with the March sistersThursday, 28 December 2017
One of the much-hyped jewels in the crown of the family-friendly BBC holiday season is this new three-episode adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's much loved novel by Heidi Thomas, the writer of Call the Midwife. We started in the New England winter –... Read more... |
Battle of the Sexes review - Emma Stone aces it as Billie Jean KingWednesday, 22 November 2017
This is a heartbreaking week for women’s tennis. The death from cancer of Jana Novotna at only 49 evokes memories of one of Wimbledon’s more charming fairytales. Novotna was a lissome athlete who flunked what looked like her best shot at greatness,... Read more... |
The World's Wife, Wales Millennium Centre, Weston Studio review - the power and frustration behind the throneMonday, 16 October 2017
How many dead female composers can you name? Tom Green, the composer of this stunning one-woman show, could initially only think of five (I managed thirteen while waiting for the show to start, but then I’ve been around somewhat longer than he has,... Read more... |
Princess Ida, National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company review - sparkling comedy, wobbly setsFriday, 01 September 2017
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you have to be pretty silly to take Gilbert and Sullivan seriously. But even sillier not to. And positively heroic to revive the pair’s 1884 three-acter Princess Ida: the show which – updated to a... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Love of a WomanFriday, 01 September 2017
In Jean Grémillon's final fiction film The Love of a Woman, Marie Prieur (Micheline Presle) arrives on the Breton island of Ushant to replace the tiny settlement's aging Dr Morel (Robert Naly). While showing Marie her new digs and surgery, Mme Morel... Read more... |
No More Boys and Girls, BBC Two – baby steps lead to great leaps for childrenThursday, 17 August 2017
Whether it’s the £400,000 that separates Mishal Husain from John Humphrys, or the 74 million miles between the metaphorical markers of Venus and Mars, there is a gulf between the genders. Despite legislation to enforce equality, the reality is... Read more... |
Apologia, Trafalgar Studios review – Stockard Channing shines bright as a 1960s radicalFriday, 04 August 2017
The 1960s were “hilarious”, says one young character in this revival, starring Broadway icon Stockard Channing, of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s 2009 family drama at the Trafalgar Studios. How so? “Oh you know, the clothes, the hair, the raging idealism.”... Read more... |
Sarah Hall: Madame Zero review – eerie tales of calamity and changeSunday, 16 July 2017
Five thousand miles away from her native Lake District, I first understood the eerie magnetism of Sarah Hall’s fiction. As a regional judge for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, I’d travelled to join the jury’s deliberations in Sri Lanka. I was keen... Read more... |
John Man: Amazons review - the real warrior women of the ancient worldSunday, 25 June 2017
As Wonder Woman hits screens worldwide, the publication of a book that explores the myth and reality of the Amazon seems timely. The latest of John Man’s works of popular history is opportunistic enough to end with a fascinating account of the... Read more... |
