RON JACOBS welcomes a timely history of the Anti Imperialist league of America, and the role that culture played in their politics
Latest editorial
Carol in tune with austerity
GORDON PARSONS recommends a production of a Dickens classic with contemporary undertones
Credible skinflint: Adan Gillet as Scrooge
[Manuel Harlan]
STEVE ANDREW appreciates a passionate account of the Scottish Club during the ‘lost decade’
By telling the story of a lawless frontier town from the point of view of the Lakota, Chinese labourers, prostitutes and displaced prospectors, makes for a potted history of capital, suggests ALEX HALL
TONY BURKE speaks to Gambian kora player SUNTOU SUSSO
MARIA DUARTE recommends a British boxing biopic about the stormy relationship between Nazeem Hamed and his trainer Brendan Ingle
ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Good Night, and Good Luck: Live from Broadway, Becoming Victoria Wood, Hamnet, and Song Sung Blue
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Filipino-US saxophonist JON IRABAGON about the threat of AI in the time of Musk and Trump, and how an artist can respond
A Christmas Carol
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
SINCE last Christmas, Britain has, if anything, slipped deeper into a modern version of Victorian economic and social deprivation and that's why the RSC is spot on in reviving David Edgar’s dramatisation of Dickens’s perennial favourite.
While Rachel Kavanaugh’s production gives full weight to the tale’s mix of exuberant jollity and tear-jerking sentimentality, Edgar’s use of its author as commentator — reminding us throughout that his narrative is based on reality and his own youthful experiences — provides an edge which never allows it to slip into pantomime.
Joseph Timms captures not only Dickens as social critic but as an actor-manager who prompts characters when necessary and who even stands in as a younger version of Scrooge before the avaricious rot sets in.
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