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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Best of 2018: London theatre
By MAYER WAKEFILED
Authentic: Ben Weatherill's Jellyfish
[Samuel Taylor]
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
IN ANOTHER year of political turmoil, London theatre certainly had something to say. At its best, it was responsive and highly vociferous on multiple fronts, ranging from #MeToo to inner-city social cleansing and much more besides.
Nicholas Hytner’s masterful production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the newly opened Bridge Theatre got the year off to a rip-roaring start.
Manipulating the audience both physically and mentally, Hytner employed a superb cast to inject the play with a raw immediacy that railed against power-hungry elites.
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MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about a two-handed theatrical homage to jazz’s most mercurial musician
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends a musical ‘love letter’ to black power activists of the 1970s