MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
Latest editorial
Round-up 2016: Theatre with Mayer Wakefield
Star columnists run through what’s impressed them this year
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
The missing sister, the vengeful WAG, cruise ship claustrophobia, and reanimated Avengers
Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
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
FROM Maoist China to game-show dystopia, via the jazz-filled streets of 1920s Chicago, 2016 has undoubtedly been a theatrical roller coaster of a year.
Dominic Cooke’s fabulous production of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at the National Theatre certainly set a fiery precedent. A superb cast brought the raw frustrations of a newly urbanised African-American population to life in a production that asked acutely resonant questions in a year where the idea of post-racial society was shown to be as hollow as it’s always sounded.
A sign of the future came in the form of Remote at the Camden People’s Theatre, which raised some profound points about how technology is slowly creeping into every facet of our existence.
Similar stories
ANGUS REID applauds the potential of an ambitious show about Gaza, and encourages it to keep its nerve
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about a two-handed theatrical homage to jazz’s most mercurial musician
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship