The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer
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Tempestuous Trojan triumph
WILL STONE sees a thrillingly contemporary version of a Greek classic from one of our top poets
PHILOCTETES TO THE HILT: Lesley Sharp
[Helen Murray]
This right-wing conspiracy theory is used to justify the coercive measures against gender, race and labour rights that best serve capitalism, attests GAVIN O’TOOLE
KENNY MONROSE recommends a new exhibition that highlights the significance of Black British music
ANGUS REID is bowled over by an exuberant film about the making of Keith Jarrett’s legendary concert
MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
Paradise
National Theatre London
A WASTELAND greets audiences to poet Kae Tempest’s adaptation of Sophocles’s Philoctetes, the Greek archer who slew Paris at Troy.
Rae Smith’s set is a barren island landscape of dust where only Philoctetes’s hermetic cave can be seen. It’s the home of a chorus of refugee outcasts who both set the scene in songs and monologues, and are an onstage audience reacting to the drama that unfolds between the three protagonists as they interact with them.
Enter Odysseus (Anastasia Hille) and Neoptolemus (Gloria Obianyo), who have come to the island to fetch the abandoned Philoctetes (Lesley Sharp), whose mastery with the bow of Heracles can help them win the Trojan War.
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