CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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Liberating experience
Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs, a magnificent play on the post-war anti-colonial struggle in Africa, loses none of its relevance in our own times, says JOHN GREEN
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
Les Blancs
National Theatre, London SE1
5/5
LORRAINE Hansberry, born in 1930, was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway.
Strongly influenced by friends and mentors like Paul Robeson and WEB Du Bois, much of her work concerned the African struggle for liberation and the Nina Simone song To Be Young, Gifted and Black was inspired by her.
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SETH SANDRONSKY recommends a Marxist critique of the ‘race-first’ views of the influential black US theorist Cedric Robinson
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GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth