MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Shock tactics fail to generate empathy
SIMON PARSONS recommends a thought-provoking play about the long-term impact of traumatic childhoods and the morality of accepting the rehabilitation of social outcasts
POWERFUL ACTING: Abigail Hood as Kayleigh Grey and Emma Keele as Rebecca Hastie
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Monster
Park Theatre
ABIGAIL HOOD’S well-constructed naturalistic drama opens with two teenage Glaswegian girls hanging out, flirting and fantasising after school on a patch of wasteland, symbolic of their lives.
The Monster, played by Hood, is Kayleigh — a bright, bitter and damaged youngster whose home life with an abusive mother on the game is a living nightmare.
When her girlfriend finally deserts her for a boy, her instinctive response is an appalling act of violence towards the only adult who has paid her any attention.
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SIMON PARSONS applauds a tense and thoughtful production that regularly challenges our political engagement and prejudices
