ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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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
[Geraint Lewis]
Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer
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GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
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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