race issues
Allegiance, Charing Cross Theatre review - George Takei's childhood story makes a heartfelt musicalFriday, 20 January 2023
Like families, nations have secrets: dirty linen that they prefer not to expose to the light of day. Patriotic myths need to be protected, heroic narratives shaped, good guy reputations upheld. In 1942, the USA rounded up Japanese-Americans and... Read more... |
Watch on the Rhine, Donmar Warehouse review - Lillian Hellman's 1940 play is still asking awkward questionsWednesday, 11 January 2023
We’re reminded, in a grainy black and white video framing device, that, as late as the summer of 1941, the USA saw World War II as just another European war. As brilliantly illustrated in Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America, not only was such... Read more... |
Othello, National Theatre review - ambitious but emotionally underpoweredSaturday, 10 December 2022
Clint Dyer is the first black director of Othello at the National Theatre, a venue that once staged the piece with its actor founder Laurence Olivier playing the lead role in blackface. We are reminded of this now-reviled practice before... Read more... |
A Child of Our Time, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - the spirit still movesMonday, 28 November 2022
Half a century ago, Michael Tippett’s A Child of our Time felt inescapable. For a youth-choir singer in the London of that period, his wartime “modern oratorio” supplied a reference-point of ambition and achievement to which our exasperated elders... Read more... |
Derek Owusu: Losing the Plot review - the finest perfumeThursday, 10 November 2022
Derek Owusu’s debut That Reminds Me won the Desmond Elliot Prize in 2020. When asked what it was that she loved most about Owusu’s semi-autobiographical 117-page book, Preti Taneja, chair of the judges (and winner of the prize herself in 2018)... Read more... |
The Doctor, Duke of York's Theatre review - Juliet Stevenson will see you nowMonday, 10 October 2022
Robert Icke is an expert in corporate tragedy. I don’t mean that in a bad way - just that he has a penchant for taking classics (Hamlet, The Oresteia, Mary Stuart) and transporting them, with the help of designer Hildegard Bechtler, to the frosted-... Read more... |
James IV: Queen of the Fight, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh review - revelatory historical dramaThursday, 06 October 2022
"The poem is real," intones entertainer-turned-courtier Ellen solemnly as a prologue and epilogue to Rona Munro’s vivid, vibrant new James IV: Queen of the Fight, presented by Scottish producers Raw Material and Edinburgh’s Capital Theatres in... Read more... |
The Clinic, Almeida Theatre review - race and the status quoWednesday, 14 September 2022
As Dipa Baruwa-Etti’s latest play, The Clinic, reminds us, the Tory party has a strong showing of Black MPs – Badenoch, Cleverly, Kwarteng. It was finished long before the latest Cabinet appointments, but presciently picked those three names, all... Read more... |
The Darkest Part of the Night, Kiln Theatre - issues-led drama has its heart in the right placeSaturday, 23 July 2022
Music plays a big part in the life of Dwight, an 11-year-old black lad growing up in early 80s Leeds. He doesn't fit in at school, bullied because he is "slow", and he doesn't fit in outside school, would-be friends losing patience with him.But he... Read more... |
The White Card, Soho Theatre review - expelling the audience from its comfort zoneFriday, 01 July 2022
We’re in New York City, in an upscale loft apartment, with that absence of stuff that speaks of a power to acquire anything. There are paintings on the walls, but we see only their descriptions: we learn that the owner (curator, in his word) really... Read more... |
The Fellowship, Hampstead Theatre review - strong clashes, too little dramaWednesday, 29 June 2022
I live in Brixton, south London. A few days ago, the borough’s aptly named Windrush Square hosted events which celebrated the contribution of the Windrush Generation and their descendants.With Windrush Day being 22 June, last week was originally... Read more... |
We (Nous) review - a low-key look at life in the suburbs of ParisTuesday, 28 June 2022
Director Alice Diop read an article by Pierre Bergounioux in which he described how he began writing to draw attention to his overlooked neck of the woods – Correze, in central France. It was a lightbulb moment for her: “My approach as a film-maker... Read more... |
