MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
Hare-brained offering
TOM KING is distinctly unimpressed by a play on the Labour Party by a writer dubbed 'the premier political dramatist writing in English'
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
I’m Not Running
National Theatre, London
SIR David Hare must be tidying up — sorting the papers on which he’s scribbled various ideas and lines over the past few years and, in an effort to prevent his material going to waste, has decided to amalgamate them into a production for the National.
His play, directed by Neil Armfield, is about the Labour Party. Except it’s also about the political outsider, as well as the NHS, alcoholism, domestic violence, mental health, immigration and why there’s never been a female Labour prime minister. Female genital mutilation gets a look in too.
Plays, of course, often contain several themes but each of the subjects broached gets such a fleeting mention, apparently just for the purpose of setting up a line Hare’s particularly proud of — “If there were a country in the world where 90 per cent of men were having their dicks cut off, don’t tell me they wouldn’t be sending gunboats,” might be one — that they leave us none the wiser before the plot hastily resumes.
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TOM KING marvels at the insights into the lived reality of the legionaries of the Roman empire revealed by 2,000-year-old artefacts
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Playwright MARK RAVENHILL talks to Tom King about how the lockdown and its impact on care homes has been the catalyst for his new radio play
