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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Skin-deep significance
MARY CONWAY recommends an important play on the racism experienced by black people
Bearing witness: ear for eye
[Stephen Cumminskey]
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
ear for eye
Royal Court Theatre, London
BLACK is so much more than a colour. It’s a brutal truth that, if your skin is black, the world responds to you with hostility.
And in her new play, ear for eye's writer and director debbie tucker green, in brilliant rainbow hues, shares what it’s like to live within a black skin and to daily face entrenched assumptions that go way beyond prejudice from time immemorial.
A superbly acted ensemble piece, it has all the verbal pyrotechnics and structural precision of a long and vivid poem. Its three-part narrative, more telling in its abandonment of chronological progression, reveals the depth of experience in the moment.
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