Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
Jude the abused
Mary Conway is put through the mill and ultimately enlightened by an unrelenting portrayal of a cruel all-male world
theatre review
PAUL FOLEY is disappointed by a production that encourages the audience to laugh at rather than with the characters
Odysseus’s homecoming myth is treated as a factual story, with strong resonances for our contemporary world. This is an implicit anti-war film that has an urgent relevance, writes JOHN GREEN
The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
WILL STONE is impressed by Hania Rani who is already making a name for herself in the male-dominated world of modern classical music
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
A Little Life
Harold Pinter Theatre
If your stomach turns at gruelling acts of paedophilia, man-on-boy rape and the gushing blood of self-harm, this play is not for you.
On the other hand, if you value a brutally graphic, visceral, relentless journey into the dark centre of one man’s soul, you’ll stay and tough it out. It’s an epic tale of almost allegorical significance which rises far above what might initially seem like a catalogue of gratuitous misery.
And James Norton of Happy Valley inhabits Jude, the lead, with a self-effacing and tender display that converts before our eyes to one of sacrificial splendour.
More from this author
MARY CONWAY recommends a beautifully judged performance that shines a light on the experience of all female war babies and boomers
A nervous year, showing that the theatre, like the world, stands on a precipice and seems uncertain where to jump
MARY CONWAY applauds a worthy revival of the US 1939 classic drama that studies the dehumanising consequences of affluence
MARY CONWAY relishes the revival of two classics for the naked expression of truthful thoughts and class anger