DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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The groundbreaking one-woman show relays Marx’s Soho residency with verve as well as loving care
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MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
Marx in Soho,
Riddles Court, Edinburgh
★★★★★
HOWARD ZINN’S 1999 play is not just a provocative resurrection of Karl Marx for modern times — it has created a highway for multiple Karl Marxes to appear — as a bearded impersonator and an afro’d black worker in US productions — and this incarnation comes with a brilliant twist: Marx comes back as a woman.
Mary Myers performs Marx with no make-up and no beard, just a suit and the shuffle of an elderly intellectual, but she summons the presence of the man with compelling virtuosity.
You just watch her eyebrows, and every other detail fills itself in. And this new spin takes the play on an exhilarating ride, and adds an extra layer of subversiveness.
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