race issues
Seberg review - lightweight script, heavyweight performanceFriday, 10 January 2020
It’s 1968, and Seberg leaves her husband, Romain Gary (Yvan Attal) and son, Alexandre (Gabriel Sky) for an audition in Hollywood. She seems happy to be going. Touching down in LAX she joins a group of black activists, led by Hakim Jamal (Anthony... Read more... |
A Kind of People, Royal Court review - multiculturalism falls apartThursday, 12 December 2019
The trouble with prejudice is that you can't control how other people see you. At the start of her career, playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's work was set in her own Sikh community. But, like other playwrights from similar backgrounds, she has tended... Read more... |
Fairview, Young Vic review - questioning the assumptions of raceMonday, 09 December 2019
Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview comes to the Young Vic with the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama under its belt, and a reputation for putting audiences on their mettle through a build-up of theatrical surprises that culminate in a denouement about... Read more... |
The Nightingale review – revenge without redemptionMonday, 02 December 2019
Writer-director Jennifer Kent knows that Australia’s colonial past shouldn’t be beautified, and she drives that fact home in every gloom-drenched shot of The Nightingale (her second feature after The Babadook from 2014). This is an immensely... Read more... |
Harriet review - potentially stirring biopic proves a slogSaturday, 23 November 2019
A defining chapter in American history is all but sold down river in Harriet, director Kasi Lemmons' tubthumpingly banal film about the extraordinary bravery and courage of the American freedom fighter, Harriet Tubman. Telling the same story more... Read more... |
Lenny Henry, Watford Colosseum review - enjoyable evening with genial hostMonday, 28 October 2019
It’s a long time since Lenny Henry performed live comedy, and a lot has happened in that interval. He has reinvented himself as a serious actor on stage and screen, become a spokesman for the black British experience, was knighted in 2015 and is now... Read more... |
Little Baby Jesus, Orange Tree Theatre review - an early play thrillingly alive for nowThursday, 24 October 2019
Time has been not just kind but even crucial to Little Baby Jesus, the 2011 play from the multi-hyphenate talent Arinzé Kene, who since then has gone on become a major name on and offstage: the West End transfer of his self-penned... Read more... |
Lenny Henry's Race Through Comedy, Gold review - illuminating account of TV's struggle to become multiculturalWednesday, 16 October 2019
Sir Lenny Henry, PhD and CBE, is scarcely recognisable as the teenager who made his TV debut on New Faces in 1975. He’s been a stand-up comedian, musician and Shakespearean actor, and even wrote his own dramatised autobiography for BBC One.A... Read more... |
The Day Shall Come review – Homeland Security satire lacks biteThursday, 10 October 2019
A new film by Chris Morris ought to be an event. The agent provocateur of Brass Eye infamy has tended to rustle feathers and spark debate whatever he does. His last film, Four Lions, dared to find comedy in Islamic terrorism in 2010,... Read more... |
'Master Harold' ... and the Boys, National Theatre review - timelessly movingWednesday, 02 October 2019
Time has been kind to Athol Fugard's "Master Harold"...and the Boys. It's a stealth bomb of a play that I saw in its world premiere production in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1982 and that has been a regular part of my playgoing life ever since. Yes,... Read more... |
The Last Tree review - young, angry, and black in '90s UKTuesday, 01 October 2019
Putting a radical spin on a fish-out-of-water story, The Last Tree explores troubling aspects of the African diaspora experience in an England riddled with xenophobia and black-on-black racism. Shola Amoo’s semi-autobiographical second feature is... Read more... |
Chiaroscuro, Bush Theatre review - music, sweet, sweet musicSaturday, 07 September 2019
Identity politics has been around for decades. One of the great things about the Bush Theatre in West London is the fact that it not only stages new plays by a diverse range of playwrights, but also successful recent revivals of modern classics such... Read more... |
