MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Towering Rylance at the heart of Dr Semmelweis
SIMON PARSONS recommends a production about a pioneering 19th-century Hungarian doctor that reverberates with contemporary relevance
A string quartet and dancers representing the lost women troubling Semmelweis's thoughts, haunt both the stage and the auditorium
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ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Dr Semmelweis
Bristol Old Vic
THE prescient seeds for this thought-provoking and stylish production were sown before the Covid pandemic started and its development has been shaped by the collaborative response enforced by the ensuing restrictions.
Mark Rylance and Stephen Brown have resurrected the largely unknown life of a 19th-century Hungarian doctor who was a pioneer of antiseptic procedures and became known as the saviour of mothers.
Working in the Vienna General Hospital, Ignaz Semmelweis realised that the increasing number of deaths in the maternity ward were related to doctors moving directly from autopsies to obstetrics carrying infections with them.
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