MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Wiggle room
MATTHEW HAWKINS appreciates an interpretation in dance of James Baldwin’s landmark novel of doomed homosexual desire
SENSUAL ENLIGHTENMENT: Teige Bisnought and Dylan Springer in Inside Giovanni's Room.
[Drew Forsyth] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Inside Giovanni’s Room
Phoenix Dance Company, Dundee Rep
GIOVANNI’S ROOM is a James Baldwin novel wherein an attractive American in Paris experiences a loving liberation that is only viable within specific hospitality. He is already set to marry. Convention rears its head when his intended turns up. She is anticipating their untrammelled union. In her absence, there’s been physical compulsion: the breaching of societal chasms, in quest of same-sex spasms.
Back in the 1950s many Americans, including writers like James Baldwin, found Paris less repressive than their homelands. The city would form an arena for sensual enlightenment and self-definition. Compromise and casualties could ensue on homecoming.
Inside Giovanni’s Room is now an intrepid full-evening work presented by Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre.
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