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
“I DON’T want theatre to be comfortable,” writer and director Alexander Zeldin told the Morning Star last week. “I don’t want it to be consensual.”
And when the lights go up on his latest play Faith, Hope and Charity, it’s with a stark, fluorescent flicker that transforms the National’s Dorfman theatre into a run-down community centre and foodbank on the brink of closure.
At its helm is Hazel — played by the brilliant Cecilia Noble — whose weekly patchwork meals struggle to fill the gaps left by a crumbling welfare state in the age of austerity.
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth
MARY CONWAY applauds the success of Beth Steel’s bitter-sweet state-of-the-nation play
MAYER WAKEFIELD relishes a witty and uplifting rallying cry for unity, which highlights the erasure of queer women
MARY CONWAY is blown away by a flawless production of Lynn Nottage’s exquisite tragedy


