FILM REVIEW: AMADEUS AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE. THE CURIOUS FLAW in this almost mythic tale of maverick talent, jealousy and the celebration of mediocrity, is how it is hinged on ostensible fact. Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus took some fuzzy hearsay around the life and death of 18th […]
FILM REVIEW: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. CAN YOU HAVE too much midsummer madness at the same time? It’s an odd decision for arguably two of the biggest of London’s theatres to be live streaming the same play at virtually the same time. Truth be told, if you watch […]
FILM REVIEW: CORIOLANUS. THE UNCOMFORTABLE MYTH which sees a greatly loved hero get vilified and banished with the ebbs and flows of societal energies is one of the streams of narrative that infuses Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. But like his works of the ilk of King Lear, there is so […]
FILM REVIEW: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. THE ROLE OF Blanche du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire has, since 1947 when Tennessee Williams first penned it, become iconic as a reflection of the tawdry vulnerability and bravado of a character losing her moorings, while she pretends to be […]
FILM REVIEW: THE BARBERSHOP CHRONICLES. WHERE IS IT that African men get to kick back, let their hair down and loosen their tongues? The communal urinal? The local bar? Under the pen of Inua Ellams, it’s the barbershop; South African writers of the ilk of Tony Miyambo, Sue […]
FILM REVIEW: FRANKENSTEIN. This review is premised on the version of the work with Jonny Lee Miller as the creature. A man makes a living creature by pulling together alchemical possibilities and graveyard detritus sewn together with a crude hand. And thus starts one of the western world’s […]
FILM REVIEW: FRANKENSTEIN. This review is premised on the version of the work with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature. What is it that gives us humanity? Nay, that gives us life? The stuff that distinguishes life from death is the substance of the 1817 prototype gothic horror novel […]
THEATRE REVIEW: TREASURE ISLAND. PATSY FERRAN IS a Spanish-born actor, who at the time of the stage debut of the National Theatre’s Treasure Island was in her early 20s. The enormity of her presence, the wit and poetry of the manner in which she articulates and inhabits the […]
SOMETIMES, ALL YOU need, for a cultural pick-me-up that allows you to remember that there is true artistic greatness in this broken little world of ours, all you need to do is step into a movie theatre. But not just any movie theatre. On this particular occasion, if […]
SHE SIZZLES WITH her sense of queenly potency, her sexual beauty and the essence of being Cleopatra and all that she represents to the past and the future. This is Sophie Okonedo who defies ordinary adjectives. Her performance is so fine, you cannot take your eyes or your […]
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