MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Innocents in Mostar
A promising debut that leaves glittering memories but has ducked the politics of the Croat-Bosniak conflict simmering at the time, writes MARY CONWAY
INNOCENTS? Saffron Coomber as Mina and Dino Kelly as Mili
[Marc Brenner]
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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
Old Bridge
Bush Theatre
FOR a play set in Mostar in 1988 and 1992, Old Bridge has surprisingly little to say about the complex allegiances and cataclysmic politics that brought mayhem to this Balkan city at a precise point in the 20th century.
Instead, it is a very personal story of four young people who begin the play as ardent quasi-teenagers (two are 18; two 20) and end it with lives blown apart by terrifying military action that they don’t understand, even less support.
Igor Memic tore this play, which premieres at the Bush Theatre as winner of the 2020 Papatango New Writing prize, from his very guts.
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