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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Devastating theatre offers a totalised view of humanity
ANGUS REID recommends a production that explores the urgent need to be reacquainted with the dangers of repression and the difficult path to selfhood
CONSUMMATE: Lorn MacDonald as Sigismundo
[Ryan Buchanan]
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
Life Is A Dream
Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
THREE centuries before psychoanalysis, Spanish playwright Pedro Calderon proposed his own “interpretation of dreams.”
After a trauma that has disposed of the father and left the mother in charge, the thing she most fears has been locked away. This is the price of courtly stability and a fragile peace in the realm.
Life Is A Dream opens when the trapdoor is flung back and the unconscious emerges to take revenge in the form of a snarling humanoid, a bundle of primitive drives supercharged by sex and aggression.
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ANGUS REID applauds the potential of an ambitious show about Gaza, and encourages it to keep its nerve
MARY CONWAY is spellbound by superb performances in Arthur Miller’s study of the social and personal stress brought about by Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth