ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
Latest editorial
Lava, Bush Theatre London
Impassioned exposé of pain and anger wreaked by racism and prejudice
MAGNIFICENT: Ronke Adekoluejo
[Helen Murray]
Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer
New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams
GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
MORE of a poetic discourse than a play, Ronke Adekoluejo’s monologue, written by Benedict Lombe, follows a young woman’s often happy but sometimes fraught journey from her birthplace in the Congo to South Africa, Ireland and then England.
Lava begins as an entertaining tale with a generous helping of humour. Yet its end is visceral in its challenging conclusions.
The first half is loosely framed around Adekoluejo’s quest to gain a British passport. But when that theme draws to a somewhat tame, if amusing, conclusion the way is paved for a more intense and deliberately disjointed second half.
Similar stories
PETER MASON applauds a stage version of Le Carre’s novel that questions what ordinary people have to gain from high-level governmental spying
ROGER McKENZIE expounds on the motivation that drove him to write a book that anticipates a dawn of a new, fully liberated Africa – the land of his ancestors
MANJEET RIDON relishes a novel that explores the guilty repressions – and sexual awakenings – of a post-war Dutch bourgeois family
ROS SITWELL reports from the Morning Star conference on ‘Race, Sex and Class Liberation’ last weekend