Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
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Martin Luther King revisited
MAYER WAKEFIELD salutes a fresh angle on the conflicted soul that led the civil rights movement
Adrian Decosta as Martin Luther King, with Will Batty, Andrew Earl and Lincoln James
[Courtesy of TNT Theatre]
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
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
The Life and Death of Martin Luther King
Golden Goose Theatre, London
“THE only thing that I’m truly scared of is myself” is the line that lingers in the mind as the audience departs TNT Theatre’s turbulent retelling of MLK’s famous life.
Sandwiched in a discussion between his wife Corretta and his trusted right-hand man Ralph Abernathy during the Montgomery bus boycott, the almost-mythical Baptist minister seems consumed by self-doubt, as he does through much of this production.
Snappy vignettes of King’s campaigning life retell many of his victorious struggles from Selma, Alabama, to Washington DC with creative vigour.
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GEORGE FOGARTY is dazzled by a breathtakingly skillful puppet version of Shakespeare’s greatest love poem
MARY CONWAY applauds the timely revival of Miller’s study of people fatally deformed by the economics of survival
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about a two-handed theatrical homage to jazz’s most mercurial musician
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship