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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The Provoked Wife, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
The RSC are in assured form in a classic Restoration farce
Comic turn: Caroline Quentin as Lady Fancyfull
[Pete le May]
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
SIR JOHN Vanbrugh is reputed to have started writing The Provoked Wife when imprisoned as a suspected British spy in the Bastille.
Back in London he finished it years later, after the 1696 success of his debut play The Relapse. That non-linear track record had no effect on his shaping of this archetypical Restoration comedy of manners, in which young men about town hunt down equally willing young women in witty sex games.
The accompanying paraphernalia of masked disguises and cuckolding of gulled husbands reflects the manners and morals of an elite strand of a London society entertained by theatrical images of itself.
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