GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
My Neighbour Totoro
Barbican
ADAPTING everyone’s favourite Miyazaki film to stage is no mean feat. How on Earth does a production even begin to represent the giant cartoon hero, a sort of oversized rabbit, or the fantastical Catbus? Prepare to be amazed.
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has teamed up with composer Joe Hisaishi, who worked on the original soundtrack and scored many other films from the great Japanese animator and his Studio Ghibli, to create something as magical and unique in its own right.
Director Phelim McDermott, known for staging ambitious operas including Philip Glass’s Akhnaten and Satyagraha, and adaptor Tom Morton-Smith stay true to the whimsical imagination of the 1988 flick while giving it a whole new dimension for the stage.
GORDON PARSONS salutes the apt return of Brecht’s vaudevillian cartoon drama that retains the vitality of the boxing or the circus ring
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
WILL STONE applauds a fine production that endures because its ever-relevant portrait of persecution



