ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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A Dickensian romp
DAVID NICHOLSON, eight-year-old BEHATI and nine-year-old SKYLAR applaud a hilarious production that doesn’t ignore the social message
VICTORIAN MORALITY FOR KIDS: A Christmas Carol at Sherman Theatre, Cardiff
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
A Christmas Carol
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff
HATS off to the Sherman Theatre for a hilarious and scary production of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.
This was not your usual dramatic take on the ghostly seasonal favourite, but an imaginative and musical version of the classic by writer Gary Owen and director Joe Murphy.
The well-trodden tale of the redemption of a penny-pinching money-lender has been given a seasonal boost by setting it in Cardiff and including comedy, puppets, singing and dancing as well as casting Scrooge as a woman. But the core of the story about Victorian attitudes towards the poor and the state’s violence to those falling on hard times remains. As Skylar noted: “People were cruel to poor people because they had no money.”
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