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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Cuckoo land
JAMES WALSH is compelled by an eloquent, scattershot broadside at modern psychiatry
Sammy Trotman in That's Not My Name; detail from A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière, 1887, by André Brouillet
[Paris Descartes University/CC]
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
That’s Not My Name
Golden Goose Theatre
IN a tent by a tempestuous sea, a young woman is having a tantrum on the floor. Crisps are everywhere, bar where are they supposed to be. Is this normal? Well, that’s kind of the point of That’s Not My Name, an eloquent, scattershot broadside at modern psychiatry.
Sammy Trotman is white, privileged, and heavily pathologised. Borderline personality disorder. Dissociative personality disorder. A narcissist, perhaps. A sociopath? As this show explains, in its own, often unfocused way, a lot of these labels rely on context. And what matters, perhaps, is the cycle of trauma, and how we break it.
In short, this is not a great advert for late capitalism, even if you have the wealth to circumnavigate our collapsing mental health services.
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