STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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2021 Round-up with Gordon Parsons
On stage the intriguing Splinter of Ice, eccentricity of Wuthering Heights and a revival of the Living Newspaper tradition absorbed just as much as the graphic novel The Dancing Plague, Ariel Dorfman’s The Compensation Bureau or Mario Vargas Llosa’s Harsh Times
UTTERLY ABSORBING: Oliver Ford Davies (Graham Greene, left) and Stephen Boxer (Kim Philby) in Splinter of Ice
[James Findlay]
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
THIS year we all needed cheering up on the theatre front and two shows hit the mark. In their new Avon-side, Stratford, mobile theatre, the RSC’s Comedy of Errors (now a perfect London Christmas treat) was a splendid choice for the company to re-emerge onto a live stage.
Shakespeare’s most chaotically joyous farce, centred on a kaleidoscopic tangle of mistaken identities, was a fine two-fingered gesture to the misery we had all suffered during the past 18 months.
Less likely, perhaps, to lighten spirits, was Wuthering Heights at Bristol Old Vic and bound for The National Theatre. However, this was a production from Emma Rice’s Wise Children Company, successor to the wonderful Kneehigh Theatre.
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