DAVID RENTON is puzzled by an ambitious attempt to look back on world culture from the future without engaging with or understanding it
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Going nowhere fast
MICHAEL STEWART is left perplexed by an odd rag-bag of a play
(L to R) Patrick Walshe Mcbride as Hugo, Eva Pope as Val, Vincent Franklin as Sir Neil Marriot, Grace Hogg-Robinson as Sarah and, taking pictures, Megan Mcdonnell as Wynona
[Manuel Harlan] 
MICHAEL STEWART applauds a fun send-up of the substandard Agatha Christie whodunnit
LEO BOIX reviews a novella by Brazilian Ana Paula Maia, and poetry by Peruvian Giancarlo Huapaya, and Chilean Elvira Hernandez
BRENT CUTLER unpicks the cryptic clues of a book within a book within a murder mystery
Reviews of the Neil Charles Quartet, the Freddie Hubbard Quintet, and the Olie Brice Quartet
GLENN BURGESS suggests that, despite his record in Spain, Orwell’s enduring commitment to socialist revolution underpins his late novels
The Snail House
Hampstead Theatre
THE title The Snail House, we are informed, comes from a Nigerian saying; “Even a snail will eventually reach its home.” What this means I’ve no idea as I thought it carries its home on its back.
Author Richard Eyre has written his first play at age 79 after a lifetime of directing for the stage and screen other writers’ works. Moreover, as the scourge of Covid was turning most of us into stir-crazy psychotics he was inspired by the pandemic to pen this state of the nation oeuvre.
Sir Neil Marriot (Vincent Franklin), a respected paediatrician who has risen to fame during the plague, is holding a celebratory birthday dinner at his son’s old school.
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MICHAEL STEWART applauds a fun send-up of the substandard Agatha Christie whodunnit
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