Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
Latest editorial
Best of 2020: Arts
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
IN A year of limited opportunity for theatre visits due to Covid, my highlight was A Taste of Honey at the Trafalgar Studios in London, which I managed to catch ahead of the first lockdown.
In the National Theatre staging of Shelagh Delaney’s best-known play, Hildegard Bechtler’s set brilliantly captured the sad and shabbily claustrophobic post-war Salford flat in which mother Helen (Jodie Prenger) and daughter Jo (Gemma Dobson) go into battle. It was possible almost to smell the dirty old town outside, with its noxious gasworks, slaughterhouse and canal.
The cast were uniformly excellent, delivering Delaney’s caustic dialogue with a tangible appreciation for its cadences and nuances.
Similar stories
A nervous year, showing that the theatre, like the world, stands on a precipice and seems uncertain where to jump
FIONA O’CONNOR admires a collection that is a riposte to the armies of developers, estate agents, private capital speculators and their marketeers
PETER MASON reckons the NYT’s production of Shakespeare’s comedy is the pick of the Christmas shows on offer in London
SYLVIA HIKINS rejoices at the confounding of evil property developers in a subversive re-telling of the fairytale