race issues
Notes From the Field, Royal Court review - sobering report from the frontline of raceSaturday, 16 June 2018![]() Anna Deavere Smith contains multitudes. As the solo performance artist recounts the testimonies she has selected from the more than 250 people she interviewed for this portrait of inequality and the criminal justice system in America, it is as if... Read more... |
Julie, National Theatre review - vacuous and unilluminatingSaturday, 09 June 2018![]() It seems appropriate that an onstage blender features amidst Tom Scutt's sleek, streamlined set for Julie given how many times Strindberg's 1888 play has been put through the artistic magimix. Rarely, however, have the results been less illuminating... Read more... |
The Last Poets, Brighton Festival review - black power sets the night alightWednesday, 16 May 2018![]() The venom with which Abiodun Oyewole spits “America is a terrorist”, the key repeated line to “Rain of Terror”, has startling power. The piece is an unashamed diatribe against his nation. Beside him his partner Umar Bin Hassan rhythmically hisses... Read more... |
Rasheeda Speaking, Trafalgar Studios review - unsettling comedy, thorny racismSaturday, 21 April 2018![]() Conflict and comedy can be unpredictable bedfellows, and Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson’s 2014 play occasionally risks overstretching itself in its attempts to reconcile the two – although its immediate context, the world of office politics,... Read more... |
Stephen: The Murder That Changed A Nation, BBC One review - ‘He was a cool guy and everybody loved him’Wednesday, 18 April 2018![]() When doctors told Doreen Lawrence her son had died she thought, "That’s not true." Spending time with his body in the hospital, aside from a cut on his cheek, it seemed to her he was sleeping. The death of a child will always be strange, and in the... Read more... |
Misty, Bush Theatre review - powerful meditation on how we tell storiesFriday, 23 March 2018![]() Arinzé Kene is having a bit of a moment. He won an Evening Standard Film Award for The Pass opposite Russell Tovey in 2016, is about to appear in a BBC drama with Paddy Considine, and has just finished lending his lovely tenor to Conor McPherson’s... Read more... |
Caroline, or Change, Hampstead Theatre review - Sharon D Clarke conquersWednesday, 21 March 2018![]() It's long been a theatrical given, especially in musicals, that characters need to be seen to change: a climactic duo in the eternally crowd-pulling Wicked makes that abundantly clear. ("Because I knew you," goes the lyric, "I have been changed for... Read more... |
Female Parts: Shorts, Hoxton Hall review - women speak outSaturday, 17 March 2018![]() Hot on the heels of International Women’s Day come three monologues written, directed and produced by women showing at Hoxton Hall. It’s kind of a treat, and kind of not.The current laser focus on gender risks the unwanted side-effect of alienating... Read more... |
Returning to Haifa, Finborough Theatre review - a bumpy journey into the Arab-Israeli pastFriday, 09 March 2018![]() This year the state of Israel marks its 70th birthday. Which means it will also be the year Palestinians remember the Nakba, the catastrophe, the mass dispossession. With that in mind, the Public Theater in New York commissioned this adaptation of a... Read more... |
Black Panther review - more meh than marvellousFriday, 16 February 2018![]() Black Panther arrives with all the critics displaying superhero-sized goodwill for its very existence. It’s a big budget mainstream Marvel movie that not only features a nearly all-black cast, but it also has an African-American writer director (... Read more... |
Collective Rage, Southwark Playhouse review - a rollicking riotWednesday, 07 February 2018![]() “Pussy is pussy” and “bitches are bitches” but Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage at Southwark Playhouse smashes tautologies with roguish comedy in a tight five-hander smartly directed by Charlie Parham.The play is set in New York and follows the ad... Read more... |
Afua Hirsch: Brit(ish) review - essential reading on identitySunday, 04 February 2018![]() Usually extracts in newspapers should stimulate the appetite of the reader to get with it; this is a rare moment when the glimpses afforded to Afua Hirsch’s Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging have peculiarly maligned a complex and amply... Read more... |
