JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Awakening
Underbelly Buttercup
THERE'S something simultaneously funny and ominous about the way we initially meet Cassie in Kirsty Osmon's one-woman show Awakening.
She's lying face down in what we soon realise is a stranger's front garden, a skewed happy birthday party hat on her head. Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday plays cheerfully and, as the show begins, a groggy Cassie is woken by the tinkle of the smartphone still clutched in her hand.
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends an inspiring, political and bittersweet account of the munitions factory workers who are the fore-runners of the modern women’s game
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends that these beautifully written diaries from Gaza be essential reading for thick-skinned MPs
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet


