GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
A memorably stimulating production despite information overload
CONUNDRUM: Pierro Niel-Mee as Victor
[Marc Brenner]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
Once Upon a Time in Nazi-occupied Tunisia
Almeida Theatre, London
THE key question set by this intriguing new Josh Azouz play is just how close to the surface our prejudices lie – and how much it takes to bring them to the fore.
Azouz tries to supply some answers through the experiences of two young Tunisian couples, one Jewish (Loys and Victor) and one Arab (Faiza and Yussef), whose previously harmonious relationships are deeply unsettled by the invading Germans in 1942.
As rifts open up and the malign presence of the Nazis drives a wedge within and between them, Loys (Yasmin Paige) declares to Victor (Pierro Niel-Mee) that “the occupation has made us not ourselves,” while Victor, in gloomier frame of mind, asks: “What if it has revealed who we are?”
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
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
MAYER WAKEFIELD is chilled by the co-dependency of two lost souls as portrayed by German communist playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz