To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Cyrano de Bergerac, The Playhouse London
Star vehicle with James McAvoy at the helm destined for box-office bonanza
CHARISMATIC: James McAvoy
[Marc Brenner]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
JAMES McAVOY teams up once again with director Jamie Lloyd for another star vehicle in Edmond Rostand’s universally loved story about Cyrano de Bergerac, the man who is brilliant with language and the imagination but, in the real world, disfigured by a monstrous nose.
Cyrano loves Roxane to distraction but he is forced to watch her fall for traditional good-looker, Christian. While she is thrilled by poetry and romantic expression and craves exquisite love letters, Christian is useless with words and out of his depth.
So Cyrano steps in and writes a barrage of letters, purportedly from Christian, but actually issuing from the depths of his own crazed passion. Which one does Roxane truly love — the good-looker or the man who shares his heart and soul with her through language? It's a universal predicament.
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MARY CONWAY is spellbound by superb performances in Arthur Miller’s study of the social and personal stress brought about by Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship