GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
Wonderland, Hampstead Theatre London
Powerful reminder of the war against the miners in 1984-85
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
BETH STEEL'S Wonderland, the second of Hampstead Theatre’s trio of free online productions, was originally performed in 2014.
Even then, its hard-hitting political message — presented through a mixture of song and documentary commentary — must have reminded those with long memories of John McGrath’s innovatory 7:84 touring company of the 1980s.
Dealing with Thatcher’s carefully pre-planned and ruthless 1984-85 war against the miners, Edward Hall’s production takes us down the pit, where we meet the Iron Lady’s “enemy within” — the men who worked in an environment and under conditions that for most people would be viewed as a daily hell.
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MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire