CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Best of 2018: Performance
by SIMON PARSONS
Revengeful: Anya Chalotra in The Village
[Alastair Muir]
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
UNQUESTIONABLY, a highlight of the theatrical year was unearthed in the damp Underbelly vaults below the central library at the Edinburgh fringe festival.
Rhum and Clay’s updated production of Dario Fo’s twisted morality play Mistero Buffo transforms the mediaeval jongleur to a zero-hours Deliveroo worker, played by Julian Spooner.
Originally denounced by the Vatican as "the most blasphemous show in the history of television," Fo’s controversial drama is a series of biblically inspired monologues, yet, in the hands of Spooner, over 100 characters take to the stage from a hysterical, manic and over-commercialised resurrection of Lazarus to a profoundly disturbing portrayal of Christ unwilling to be saved from his iconic crucifixion.
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GORDON PARSONS salutes the apt return of Brecht’s vaudevillian cartoon drama that retains the vitality of the boxing or the circus ring
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
GORDON PARSONS joins a standing ovation for a brilliant production that fuses Shakespeare’s tragedy with Radiohead's music