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
Latest editorial
Story of family Chance a fine thing in thrilling adaptation of Angela Carter novel
Fantastical: Bettrys Jones, Katy Owen and Mirabelle Gremaud in Wise Children
[Steve Tanner]
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
Wise Children
The Old Vic, London
ANGELA CARTER’S last novel Wise Children, a blend of magic realism and carnivalesque, sprawls across much of the 20th century as it follows the bizarre theatrical family fortunes of the Chance twins from the perspective of their 75th birthday.
Unacknowledged by their father, a renowned Shakespearean actor-manager, the twin girls are brought up on the wrong side of the tracks in a Brixton theatrical boarding house run by Grandma Chance.
Forced to make their own way, they become chorus girls before weaving a successful career through the latter years of music hall and variety theatre as a song-and-dance duo.
Similar stories
GEORGE FOGARTY is dazzled by a breathtakingly skillful puppet version of Shakespeare’s greatest love poem
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends a musical ‘love letter’ to black power activists of the 1970s