To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Apocalyptic overload as everything happens at once
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
WHEN asked recently whether he would describe his latest work as a play, Chris Thorpe replied: “I don’t care.” He’s not a traditional playwright and Victory Condition is not a traditional, or easily understood, play.
In it Man (Jonjo O’Neill) and Woman (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) have just returned from a holiday in Greece, not that you’d be able to tell from their largely morbid overlapping monologues, whose subject matter wafts from dreams where “angels were aliens” to “a man in a Moscow hotel room bleeding secrets,” all reeled off at a ferocious pace.
If you try hard enough to stitch a plot together you can just about decipher that Man is a sniper with his high-velocity rifle trained on a protester he is falling for, while Woman is a graphic designer for a monolithic multinational who cannot escape the lucid horror of the imagery on the daily news.
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MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth
MIKE COWLEY welcomes half a century of remarkable work, that begins before the Greens and invites a connection to — and not a division from — nature
MATTHEW HAWKINS recommends three memorable performances from Scottish dance artists Barrowland Ballet, In the Fields Project, and Wendy Houston