MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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By far the best Bard production of the year
An ideal balance between comedy and gravity in riveting Shakespeare reinvention, suggests MAYER WAKEFIELD
Hattie Ladbury as Duke and Ashley Zhangazha as Angelo
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
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
Measure for Measure
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
ABUSE of power. Check. Corruption. Check. Predatory male behaviour. Check. Draconian measures. Check. A sprinkle of pantomime. Check.
Blanche McIntyre’s Measure for Measure couldn’t be timelier. But rather than locate it in the here and now she’s transposed Shakespeare’s quintessential “problem play” into the 1970s, with James Cotterill’s design finding a happy medium between Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Austin Powers.
There is a sneaky reference to the three-day week as the electronic lighting flickers until the candles which usually light the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse take over. It’s the first of many clever devices which characterise this perceptive production.
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