STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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Faustus: That Damned Woman, Lyric Theatre Hammersmith
Ingenious reworking of Dr Faustus less than the sum of its parts
IN FOCUS THROUGHOUT: Jodie McNee as Johanna
[Manuel Harlan]
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
AS CHRIS BUSH points out in the programme note to her new play, there’s no surprise that the Faustus story — selling one’s soul to the devil in exchange for power – is one of the great myths of world culture. It’s operating every day, not least in contemporary politics.
Whereas power has been the traditional province of men, Bush’s Johanna Faustus is a woman determined at all and any cost to discover whether her mother, hanged as a child murderess witch, had in fact worked in league with the devil.
The only way is to go to the fountainhead and purchase infinite knowledge from a Lucifer tellingly bearing her father’s face.
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