CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Flaws undermine case for the defence
MAYER WAKEFIELD witnesses a powerful Isis courtroom drama marred by stereotyped characterisations
[Pete le May]
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
Faceless
Park Theatre, London
“AMERICA wants blood,” proclaims Federal Prosecutor Scott Bader in Faceless. The blood it's after is that of the supposedly studious Susie Glenn who's been seduced into travelling to Syria to join Isis by her virtual boyfriend.
“How 2015,” I hear you say, and it's true that it seems a long time ago that Isis teenage recruits were dominating the headlines. Luckily, Selina Fillinger's debut play has enough depth to keep it on track in 2018, but it’s not without some major flaws.
Largely a courtroom drama, the five-hander is undoubtedly at its best when it's on legal terrain. The relationship between the slippery misogynist Bader (Matt Mella) and his chosen “face of the prosecution” Claire Fathi (Paige Round, pictured) entices. Harvard-educated, hijab-wearing and of French-Iranian heritage, Fathi is razor-sharp and easily the most well-rounded character in the show.
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