DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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Hansard, National Theatre, London
Marital skirmishes point up personal and political schisms of the Thatcher era
Dysfunctional duo: Robin Hesketh (Alex Jennings) and Diana (Lindsay Duncan)
[Catherine Ashmore]
STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
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
WHEN junior Tory minister Robin Hesketh (Alex Jennings) returns to his idyllic Cotswolds home after a busy summer week in Parliament, he finds foxes making a mess of his garden and his unhappy, drink-sodden wife Diana (Lindsay Duncan), ready to do some destructive emotional digging of her own.
Over the course of an hour-and-a-half without interval, the two sixty-somethings pick, poke and provoke as they range over familiar argumentative territory maritally.
Yet gradually, and at Diana’s insistence, the old, well-rehearsed topics give way to new ones that have lain unconsidered for many years, leading to a dramatic and heartbreaking revelation about a painful incident from the past.
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