CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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ROUND-UP 2016
Star columnists run through what’s impressed them this year
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
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
THEATRE
GORDON PARSONS
A POWERFUL production of Eugene O’Neill’s epic family drama Long Day’s Journey into Night at Bristol Old Vic brought home the playwright’s description of a work written in “tears and blood.”
For once, the play did not focus primarily on the frustration of James Tyrone, with Jeremy Irons’s modulated performance conveying the guilt-ridden desperation of dealing with his damaged family. It allowed Lesley Manville’s Mary Tyrone, agonisingly escaping further into her drug-tortured dreams, to register the play’s dramatic tension.
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CHRIS SEARLE recommends a new album featuring Pat Thomas and Ahmed, and marvels at the tempestuous power of a live performance
Re-releases from Bobby Wellins/Kenny Wheeler Quintet, Larry Stabbins/Keith Tippet/Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Charles Mingus Quintet
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
GORDON PARSONS joins a standing ovation for a brilliant production that fuses Shakespeare’s tragedy with Radiohead's music