GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
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A disastrous divide
INDIE PURCELL sees a play on a dystopian future where the sexes are kept separate sink into a chasm of conceptual cliche
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[Manuel Harlan]
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JOHN GREEN suggests that a new, biased, and highly readable re-hash of the story of the Cambridge Five be taken with a large pinch of salt
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a timely reminder of the long history of protests and the outdoor spaces in which they takes place
The Divide
The Old Vic, London
YOU'D be forgiven if you walked out of watching Alan Ayckbourn's The Divide vowing never to go to the theatre again.
Cut down from the original six-hour marathon, this four-hour epic dystopian tale, set over 100 years into the future, is full of so many mixed messages and insulting cliches it's hard to grasp Ayckbourn's point.
It's set in a post-apocalyptic society where, following an infectious plague carried by women, the sexes are kept mostly separate. Women live in the south and men in the north, same-sex relationships are the norm, heterosexuality is forbidden and children are the product of artificial insemination.
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