KEN COCKBURN assesses the art of Ian Hamilton Finlay for the experience of warfare it incited and represents
Snowflake, Kiln Theatre London
Mike Bartlett's Christmas cracker an antidote for post-election blues
ON NEUTRAL GROUND: Elliot Levey and Amber James in Snowflake
The bard gives us advance notice of his upcoming medieval K-pop releases
GORDON PARSONS steps warily through the pessimistic world view of an influential US conservative
HENRY BELL takes issue with the assertion that basic income is a remedy for poverty when it doesn’t address the inbuilt inequality of capitalism
RON JACOBS welcomes an investigation of the murders of US leftist activists that tells the story of a solidarity movement in Chile
RITA DI SANTO surveys the smorgasbord of films on offer at this year’s festival
Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
THERE was a danger that the restaging of Mike Bartlett’s Snowflake could suffer from a sense of outdated despondency, focusing as it does on the familial tensions resulting from the EU referendum.
But, a year on from its initial outing at Oxford’s Old Fire Station, its healing power remains undiminished and it finds new resonance as the toxic dust of the latest vote begins to settle.
Its first half is wholly devoted to the twitchy self-loathing of the lonely forty-something Andy (Elliot Levey), who has evidently not recovered from losing his wife to cancer and has resorted to blaming the “creeping collapse of human dignity” for the estrangement of his daughter Maya (Ellen Robertson).
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