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GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
#AIWW: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, Hampstead Theatre at Home
Timely revival of play on Chinese dissident
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
HOWARD BRENTON’S 2013 dramatic treatment of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s arrest and 81-day interrogation has acquired fresh relevance today, as part of Hampstead Theatre's “at home” online season.
With Trump rekindling cold-war embers, this well-tested dramatic formula of mental torture techniques, with the victim subjected to disorientation pressures designed to extort confessions, fits well into the media’s current anti-Chinese narrative.
The central interrogation, first by a fairly amateurish police unit who appear to be bewildered by their unusual prisoner, and then by the political department under military auspices, has a compelling authenticity owing to Benedict Wong’s convincing performance as the victim.
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Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire