FIONA O’CONNOR steps warily through a novel that skewers many of the exposed flanks of the over-privileged
Different but the same
GORDON PARSONS sees an imagined confrontation between Queen Elizabeth I and the jailed Mary Queen of Scots which reveals them as equally confined by personal and political traumas
Juliet Stevenson (centre)
MARY CONWAY applauds the study of a dysfunctional family set in an Ireland that could be anywhere
MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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
Mary Stuart
Duke of York Theatre, London
WE ARE all prisoners of our own personalities and of history and no-one understood this better than Friedrich Schiller, widely regarded as Germany’s Shakespeare.
His epic historical drama Mary Stuart, transferred from the Almeida theatre to the West End, focuses on the tragic conflict between the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots and England’s Protestant Queen Elizabeth.
The complex family web of the Tudors left Mary with a valid claim to the English crown in the event of Elizabeth’s death and was consequently a rallying point for Catholic dissidents.
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GORDON PARSONS recommends an ideal introduction to the writer who was first to give the English a literary language
GORDON PARSONS welcomes a graphic biography of George Sand, the most popular French novelist in 19th-century Britain
GORDON PARSONS relishes a fast moving production of Sheridan’s comic masterpiece
GORDON PARSONS relishes a play that reveals how language carries much more than simple communication
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DENNIS BROE appreciates the work of TV writer Steven Knight, and his systematic exposure of the debilitating effects of British capitalism
PETER MASON applauds a thought-provoking study of the relationship between a grieving woman and her photographer
MARIA DUARTE appreciates a political thriller set in the Tudor court of Henry VIII
MARY CONWAY evaluates a polemical play whose actors, rather than the writer, introduce the humanity and the light and shade