SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
This is Tory England
TOM SYKES went to Jaywick in Essex last summer and kept a diary. Here is an extract illustrated by his companion on that journey Louis Netter
PAUL FOLEY recommends an extraordinary double bill that packs a punch and leaves you reeling
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
MATTHEW HAWKINS pays tribute to the performance artist and costumier, Leigh Bowery
SIMON DUFF reviews a new composition by German composer and pianist Florian Weber that blurs the line between where improvisation ends and composition begins
New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
WE’VE only been in Jaywick for an hour and we’re sure this is the most deprived place we’ve ever seen, at least in this country. The stats bear this out — 57 per cent of the denizens rely on some form of state benefit to survive.
Besides, you know your town might just be in a spot of bother when a United Nations poverty investigator decides to visit, which is precisely what happened here in 2018.
Professor Philip Alston concluded that Jaywick’s woes had nothing to do with personal idleness, and everything to do with years of public underfunding and the Tory government’s callous universal credit system.
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Genocide, racism and imperialism are in the Labour Party’s DNA, argues TOM SYKES
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Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jnr has won, using a tech-savvy social media rewrite of his parents’ dictatorship and a troll army to smear his closest competitor — DR TOM SYKES reports on a society seemingly unable to leave its own dark age
TOM SYKES examines the ever-expanding military-industrial-academic complex
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