The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
Latest editorial
Ambitious plays in need of directorial editing
island
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
O, Island
★★★
Ivy Tiller, Vicar’s Daughter, Squirrel Killer
★
The Other Place
Stratford-Upon-Avon
THE post-Covid re-emergence of the RSC’s Mischief Festival in its Stratford studio theatre, designed to introduce new writing, features a double bill of two ambitious short plays full of topical references, both in need of directorial editing.
O, Island by Nina Seagal is a dystopian parable set in a Home Counties village not a million miles from Ambridge, isolated by river floodwaters.
It moves from knock-about comedy, with the local Tory MP determined at all costs to snatch a publicity photograph of his heroic rescuing performance, being rejected by the villagers, who establish an independent islet state led by the articulate, grandmotherly Margaret.
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