MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
The fading memory of spitfires and Vera Lynn
PETER MASON recommends a tentative metaphor of a nation in search of a meaningful destiny beyond the remembrance of conflict
spitfire
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
The Winston Machine
New Diorama Theatre, London
A ONE-ACT play commissioned from the Kandinsky theatre company, The Winston Machine examines how WWII is, perhaps, ceasing to be a key reference point for many British people.
The inference from events that unfold on stage is that we ought to view this as a good thing: a liberating experience that will release us from some of the knots we’ve tied ourselves in over the past 75 years.
Without deprecating the conflict, or the people who took part in it, The Winston Machine suggests that it’s time to move on, and that we’d all benefit from a bit more forward thinking.
More from this author
PETER MASON applauds a thought-provoking study of the relationship between a grieving woman and her photographer
PETER MASON is moved by a striking production of Noel Streatfeild’s enduringly popular children’s book
PETER MASON reckons the NYT’s production of Shakespeare’s comedy is the pick of the Christmas shows on offer in London
PETER MASON shivers in the under-heated ecclesiastical setting of a concert featuring five 19th-century French composers
