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 profound experience of otherness
ANGUS REID is impressed by an actor-auteur’s powerful rendition of the universal experience of the marginalised, the other, the helpless
Ellen Renton in Within Sight
[Tyrone Lewis]
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
Within Sight
Touring/Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling
ELLEN RENTON’S one-woman show tells the story of how she trained for the Paralympics, had her hopes dashed, and in the process found her voice as a writer of breathtaking verve and quality.
As someone with albinism and partial sight, she invites the audience to liken her to any number of movie freaks until the shock of “the first time I saw a face like mine / that wasn’t paired with a plunging key change.”
She glimpses a Paralympic athlete on the TV who also “held up a hand to fight off the light, like I did / she too hid a warzone behind her eyelids.”
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MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
The book feels like a writer working within his limits and not breaking any new ground, believes KEN COCKBURN
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today