race issues
Lenny Henry, TouringMonday, 21 February 2011
It takes a certain something to make a roomful of white people get their funk on. I feel I have dispensation to make that ridiculous generalisation because Lenny Henry, famously born in Dudley to immigrant Jamaican parents, addresses the whiteness... Read more... |
Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, Channel 4Tuesday, 15 February 2011
News reaches us of discontent within the so-called "travelling community", where not everyone appreciates the portrait of Romany life which has been emerging from Channel 4's hit series. Perhaps they didn't like all that stuff about hairy-... Read more... |
Reggae Britannia/ Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae, BBC FourMonday, 14 February 2011
BBC Four's Britannia series keeps it simple - it tells the story in a straight line, illustrates it with as much archive material as the budget will allow, and interviews as many key protagonists as it can find. If the subject is strong enough, you'... Read more... |
Jimmy Carr, Orchard Theatre, DartfordSunday, 16 January 2011
Jimmy Carr, a comedian who has more than once got into hot water over jokes that some find offensive, does a very strange thing for the encore of his latest show, Laughter Therapy - he gives a lecture cum homily on the limits of offensiveness, and... Read more... |
Blasted, Lyric HammersmithThursday, 28 October 2010
If any play of the past two decades deserves the label legendary it must be Sarah Kane’s debut, which was condemned as “this disgusting feast of filth” on its arrival in 1995, but is now firmly ensconced in the canon of contemporary playwriting.... Read more... |
Clybourne Park, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 02 September 2010
The American Dream is a great subject for theatre. Not only is it a powerful myth that animates millions, but it is also vulnerable to being subverted by generations of playwrights. Like an aged boxer, it is liable to being floored by a well-aimed... Read more... |
Cherry Tree LaneThursday, 02 September 2010
Ever since his award-winning debut From London to Brighton (2006), Paul Andrew Williams has been an exemplary British filmmaker of sparky, low-budget genre tales. Cherry Tree Lane is Straw Dogs in suburbia, a schematic and brutal home invasion film... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Doc Brown/ Imran YusufThursday, 12 August 2010
Doc Brown comes on stage in the hip-hop uniform of all-black clothing, lots of bling and black-out shades, and starts rapping “It’s all about me” in suitably bombastic tones. But Brown isn’t all he seems, as the rap peters out, the gear comes off... Read more... |
Lingua Franca, Finborough TheatreFriday, 16 July 2010
While films frequently spawn sequels and prequels, theatre — with the spectacular exception of the Bard’s history plays — tends to go for one-offs. In Peter Nichols’s new play, which opened at the tiny Finborough fringe theatre last night, the main... Read more... |
Justin Fashanu in Extra TimeTuesday, 06 July 2010
Ten years after Justin Fashanu - not only the first openly gay footballer, but the first black player to command a £1 million transfer fee - committed suicide in a lock-up garage in the East End, his former agent, Eric Hall, breezily... Read more... |
Sucker Punch, Royal Court TheatreMonday, 21 June 2010
The poster for Sucker Punch, Roy Williams's ambitious new play about boxing and race during the schism-prone age of Margaret Thatcher, promises a sort of black British Raging Bull: There in one graphic image are the blood and sweat, the bravado and... Read more... |
Gina Yashere, Udderbelly, SE1Sunday, 13 June 2010
In the game of musical chairs that has led up to their coverage of the soccer World Cup, BBC and ITV executives appear to have missed a trick; judging by last night’s explosive opening few minutes, in which Gina Yashere gave an expletive-laden... Read more... |
