JOE GILL speaks to the Palestinian students in Gaza whose testimony is collected in a remarkable anthology
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Making a drama out of a crisis
Playwright MARK RAVENHILL talks to Tom King about how the lockdown and its impact on care homes has been the catalyst for his new radio play
(L to R) Angela Ravenhill in 2005; (top right) Mark Ravenhill; (Bottom right) Ravenhill as a baby in 1967 with his mother Angela and his father Ted
[(L to R) Mark Ravenhill; shootget-treasurerepeat; Mark Ravenhill]
MARY CONWAY delights in a rarely performed comedy that recalls a Britain we remember in our bones
JEAN ROBERTS appreciates the way traditional panto can be remodelled into critique of the academy schools system
MARY CONWAY is riveted by a superbly crafted glimpse into the soul of a cast-off US star
MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
THEATRE remains in crisis. Some have maintained an online presence through streamed and distanced productions but most have remained closed for over a year.
Even when the Luftwaffe was carpet-bombing London, intrepid theatregoers embodied the “blitz spirit” by attending productions frequently interrupted by air-raid sirens. But that threat — albeit severe — was from without and easy to identify. Now, invisible, it is among us.
When I spoke to playwright Mark Ravenhill, whose new production Angela has just been launched as a radio drama, he pointed out that the last time venues in the capital were shut for such a long time was in 1665, when the Great Plague was tearing through the city.
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