SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
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
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
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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ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
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ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
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