RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
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A sense of over-indulgence
Misalliance is like a buffet whose rich variety leaves you feeling slightly queasy, says LYNNE WALSH
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
Misalliance
Orange Tree, Richmond-upon-Thames
THERE'S spice, stodge and some quite juicy mouthfuls in this revival of George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance but the fusion cooking is no ensemble concoction, despite some cracking performances.
Shaw is never sickly sweet and his play is a discussion, and dissection, of some of the key social issues of his day. There’s class conflict, with the nouveau riche’s one-upmanship over the aristocracy and a treatise on the fickle nature of marriage.
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Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
MARY CONWAY recommends a play that some will find more discursive than eventful but one in which the characters glow
MARY CONWAY relishes two matchless performers and a masterclass in tightly focused wordplay
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire