To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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The original girl band
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a brilliant untold Merseybeat story of how four talented women dared to break the mould
Girls Don't Play Guitars: Val, Sylvia, Pam and Mary.
[Atanas Paskalev]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
Girls Don’t Play Guitars
Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool
IN the early 1960s, changing their name from The Squaws to the fictional symbol of Liverpool, the four Liverbirds were one of the very few female bands on the Merseybeat scene, as well as one of the first all female rock and roll bands in the world. Yet how many of us have even heard of them?
Inspired by the Beatles, they went down to the Cavern Club to see what the Fab Four thought of an all-girl band. The response from John Lennon was his now infamous remark: “Girls don’t play guitars.” Unsurprisingly, The Liver Birds were shocked by this and they became even more determined to prove Lennon wrong.
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From sexual innuendo about Blackpool Rock to Bob Dylan’s ‘God-almighty world,’ the corporation’s classist moral custodianship of pop music has created a roll call of censored artists anyone would feel honoured to join, writes NICK MATTHEWS