Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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Appropriate insight into toxic legacy of slavery
MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends a hard-hitting drama of a family in denial about past collusion in the ‘triangular trade’
In denial: Franz (Edward Hogg) and Bo (Steven Mackintosh)
[Marc Brenner]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
Appropriate
Donmar Warehouse, London
THERE’S an agonising irony in the fact that the first London production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate has Barclays Bank — a bank with dark roots in the slave trade — as its principal sponsor.
The US playwright’s 2014 work examines the Lafayette family who are forced to confront the spectre of their own family history in the triangular trade but cannot truly bring themselves to do so.
Siblings Toni, Bo and Franz have returned along with their loved ones — or not, as the case may be — to the decaying plantation house in south Arkansas where they were raised, to divide a property which has been in the family for five generations.
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MARY CONWAY applauds the revival of a tense, and extremely funny, study of men, money and playing cards