GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
Strategies of resistance
SIMON PARSONS applauds the psychological study of prisoners dealing with a frighteningly oppressive world endured by far too many
Ross Tomlinson as Smash and Waj Ali as Valdez in The Unseen
[Manuel Harlan]
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
The Unseen
Riverside Studios, London
CRAIG WRIGHT’s deft and thought-provoking script set in an isolation wing for political prisoners shows little evidence of its initial commission as a play about Jesus. Instead, the taut drama is based round the relationship of two contrasting prisoners and their violent yet troubled guard.
In near adjacent cells, Wallace, an articulate analytical doctor and Valdez, a reticent yet impassioned former actor have established a long-standing relationship based only on their verbal exchanges, frequently based around word games.
Similar stories
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
SIMON PARSONS is taken by a thought provoking and intelligent play performed with great sensitivity
SIMON PARSONS is gripped by a psychological thriller that questions the the power of the state over vulnerable individuals
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic