GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends an important, if dispiriting book about the neo-colonial culture of Uganda under Yoweri Museveni
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#AIWW: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, Hampstead Theatre at Home
Timely revival of play on Chinese dissident
SUSAN DARLINGTON applauds the sensuality and strong characterisation of an unconventional ballet about an unconventional woman
BRENT CUTLER admires the plotting but takes issue with the politics of a new Scottish crime thriller
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PAUL FOLEY steps gingerly through an exhibition that purports to show east and south-east Asian culture, and questions its intentions
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HOWARD BRENTON’S 2013 dramatic treatment of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s arrest and 81-day interrogation has acquired fresh relevance today, as part of Hampstead Theatre's “at home” online season.
With Trump rekindling cold-war embers, this well-tested dramatic formula of mental torture techniques, with the victim subjected to disorientation pressures designed to extort confessions, fits well into the media’s current anti-Chinese narrative.
The central interrogation, first by a fairly amateurish police unit who appear to be bewildered by their unusual prisoner, and then by the political department under military auspices, has a compelling authenticity owing to Benedict Wong’s convincing performance as the victim.
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GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire
NICK WRIGHT delicately unpicks the eloquent writings on art of an intellectual pessimist who wears his Marxism lightly