Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
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Universal questions
MARY CONWAY recommends a play which enthrallingly explores the limits of human consciousness
Scary stairs: Chloe Langford's set for John
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
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
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
John
National Theatre, London
BY ANY standards, Annie Baker’s John is an astonishing play. Imaginative, free-thinking and anarchic, in the hands of James Macdonald at the National, it's totally captivating.
Its premise, you could argue, is that the universe has its own spiritual life and that all matter, breathing and inanimate, is possessed of a soul.
As a result, human life is a tiny presence in an unimaginably complex reality and human beings, far from possessing knowledge and power and superiority, struggle with an individual isolation and irrationality that engenders madness. At least, that’s my understanding.
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