MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Anna X, Harold Pinter Theatre London
Mordant critique of an art world infected by neoliberal values
LOST IN A FLOATING WORLD: Nabhaan Rizwan (Ariel) and Emma Corrin (Anna)
[Helen Murray] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
AN ARTWORK in itself, Anna X opens as an installation, with strobe lighting, electronic music, two dancing actors and surtitles of their clipped, and sometimes misheard, conversation.
The couple, immersed in the high-octane gadfly life of the New York arts and apps scene, are a world away from their origins. Anna (a superb performance from Emma Corrin) and Ariel (a vulnerable Nabhaan Rizwan) are the protagonists of this fine new play from Joseph Charlton, directed by Daniel Raggett.
Its subject matter is the push and pull of shallow and deep identity. Anna, from Ukraine, but posing as a rich Russian, arrives in the city to start an internship with a trendy fashion and art magazine and, of course, wants to open her own art gallery.
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