MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long
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Devastating theatre offers a totalised view of humanity
ANGUS REID recommends a production that explores the urgent need to be reacquainted with the dangers of repression and the difficult path to selfhood
CONSUMMATE: Lorn MacDonald as Sigismundo
[Ryan Buchanan] 
PAUL DONOVAN recommends three new books that explore the human relationship with nature
Doomed adolescents, when the missing person is you, classic whodunnit, and an anti-capitalist eco-thriller
WILL STONE takes a ticket to indie disco heaven, but misses the rarely performed tunes
Reviews of new releases by Jens Lekman, Big Thief, and Christian McBride Big Band
TOM PIERSCIONEK recommends a remarkable series of interviews with those few and brave Israeli citizens who refuse to do military service
Life Is A Dream
Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
THREE centuries before psychoanalysis, Spanish playwright Pedro Calderon proposed his own “interpretation of dreams.”
After a trauma that has disposed of the father and left the mother in charge, the thing she most fears has been locked away. This is the price of courtly stability and a fragile peace in the realm.
Life Is A Dream opens when the trapdoor is flung back and the unconscious emerges to take revenge in the form of a snarling humanoid, a bundle of primitive drives supercharged by sex and aggression.
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