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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Faustus: That Damned Woman, Lyric Theatre Hammersmith
Ingenious reworking of Dr Faustus less than the sum of its parts
IN FOCUS THROUGHOUT: Jodie McNee as Johanna
[Manuel Harlan]
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
AS CHRIS BUSH points out in the programme note to her new play, there’s no surprise that the Faustus story — selling one’s soul to the devil in exchange for power – is one of the great myths of world culture. It’s operating every day, not least in contemporary politics.
Whereas power has been the traditional province of men, Bush’s Johanna Faustus is a woman determined at all and any cost to discover whether her mother, hanged as a child murderess witch, had in fact worked in league with the devil.
The only way is to go to the fountainhead and purchase infinite knowledge from a Lucifer tellingly bearing her father’s face.
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