STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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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
[Stephen Cumminskey]
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
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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