KEN COCKBURN traces the one original language – that of the Yamnaya pastoral nomads – from which all European and Indian languages derive
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Europe ahead of its time
Written 25 years ago, there's an unnerving prescience to this brilliant play in the era of Brexit, says JAN WOOLF
Trainspotters: Characters in David Greig’s Europe
[Marc Brenner]
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the debunking of the iconic British war hero
ALEX HALL recommends a searing panorama of our global predicament
Comics are not just superheroes and spandex – it can be public art, telling public stories, suggests HARRIET EARLE
ALEXEI SAYLE speaks to Angus Reid about a lifetime of protest, how to hone political art – and what to do now
The bard serenades the Diggers of Wigan and their festive followers
Europe
Donmar, London
THIS fine production of David Greig’s play by the Donmar’s new artistic director Michael Longhurst is set in a shabby train station on the point of closure in an anonymous Mitteleuropa border town.
All its charm and cultural identity are gone and its inhabitants — whose accents, interestingly, are northern British — yearn for work or escape.
They are becoming nowhere people from a nowhere place trying to grasp a sense of their future, as are two refugees from war-torn former Yugoslavia. The father sleeps on the station seats, with his head resting on his adult daughter’s lap, while she stares desolately into space.
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