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: Theatre
by LYNNE WALSH
Learning curve: Dermot Crowley and Judith Roddy in Translations
[Catherine Ashmore]
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 LONDON, there’s been a lot of loss in theatrical themes this year, and a lot of theft.
In the stupendous Exodus at the Finborough from writer and director Rachael Boulton and her trailblazing company Motherlode, there was a loss of hope, future and self-esteem while the theft of language and a community’s sense of its own history was ever-present in Brian Friel’s Translations at the National Theatre.
In it, Ciaran Hinds dominated the stage as the charismatic Latinate scholar Hugh, claiming that the lyrical and sometimes mendacious Irish language was “our response to mud cabins and a diet of potatoes,” while in Ella Hickson’s The Writer at the Almeida there is loss of a woman’s identity and purpose with Romola Garai as the eponymous playwright coming across as uncertain, neurotic and passive.
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ANGUS REID applauds the potential of an ambitious show about Gaza, and encourages it to keep its nerve
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship