ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Karel Capek old fears revisited
by CALUM BARNES
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
War With the Newts
Summerhall Basement
Edinburgh
Through a plastic curtain we are ushered in one by one for processing — a brief questioning, a torch flashed in our eyes, wrist stamped then guided by an overly friendly crew member to our seats, an orange crate, in the claustrophobic hull of Captain Von Toch’s ship.
We are greeted by the digital avatars of the nebulous yet nefarious organisation “The Syndicate” who introduce a series of “entertainment protocols” narrating how we have arrived at the present war with the newts.
Tyrell Jones’s timely adaptation of Karel Capek’s 1936 novel, a surreal yet savage satire on the depredations of global capitalism and the rise of fascism, brings the polysemic allegory to the post-Brexit, global-warming scorched present.
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