Did you find that funny? Heaving a collective sigh of relief after the recent by-election in Oldham (the place just north of Manchester in which Martin McDonagh’s new play is set) there is, with some, still the bad aftertaste of having only narrowly avoided a renewed surge of ugly UKIP-led chauvinism. And it is indeed […]
Category archives: Reviews
Sarai
A woman screams. It’s an unbearably long wail. First, I’m sure it’s from pain, the utter agony of child birth and then something changes in her face, almost imperceptibly. Now it’s no longer physical pain but a woman in mourning. Sarai is barren. She runs her hands through the blood that must have splattered to […]
Oresteia
I see him put the paper final cup onto her lips. He tips the liquid into her mouth. He clasps her tightly, she swallows. Agamemnon is now guilty of poisoning his daughter Iphigenia. I brace myself for the minute that I’m about to endure. I take a deep breath and wait for the chill to […]
Lela and Co.
“This isn’t a story anyone wants to hear,” Ian says to the soldier in Blasted when he describes a particularly brutal mutilation of a woman. It has been twenty years since Sarah Kane’s debut play about gin-soaked journalist Ian who rapes his teenager lover Cate confounded its audience with a startlingly stark vision of human […]