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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A poignantly contemporary reading of an old murder folk tale
A cautionary melodrama that hits the right notes in articulating the realities of class-ridden society with omnipresent violence against women, writes GORDON PARSONS
SPLENDIDLY TALENTED: Ensemble acting
[Mike Kwasniak]
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
The Ballad of Maria Marten
The Everyman Theatre
Cheltenham
WHILE even theatrical farce can lend itself to reflecting the surrealist element in human behaviour, melodrama, with its nods towards music hall and pantomime, must be the most difficult dramatic form to treat seriously.
Back on the road after the Covid break, Eastern Angles Theatre Company’s touring production has taken this old folk tale treatment of the 1827 murder of a village girl in a journalistically sensational red barn, and invested both characters and situation with a human and historical context.
An all-female, six-member cast add a feminist dimension with obvious but not overworked reference to our contemporary Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa murders.
The original particularly horrific killing by a local man, anxious to avoid marriage to a girl he has seduced and whose baby he has possibly killed, was notable for the gothic element of the buried body being discovered after Mary’s stepmother had dreamed of its whereabouts, leading to the murderer being tracked down, tried, convicted and hanged before a huge “appreciative” crowd.
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