ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
Latest editorial
How class trumps love
MARY CONWAY is in awe of an immaculately orchestrated analysis of inequality, rendered with precise and simple clarity
LUCID CLASS ANALYSIS: David Sturzaker and Olivia Le Andersen in Nineteen Gardens
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
Nineteen Gardens
Hampstead Theatre
NINETEEN GARDENS at Hampstead Theatre is a beautifully constructed two-hander whose job it is to distil for a rapt audience a brutal truth about the way we live. This it achieves with clarity and acumen.
Written as her first play in English by established Polish writer and journalist Magdalena Miecznicka, the piece, at only an hour in length, takes us straight to the heart of a relationship between an established, well-to-do Englishman and an attractive young Polish woman. The latter works her socks off as a hotel cleaner. Even before the play starts, the drama of this scenario fizzes with danger and we all know the liaison is as doomed as the levelling-up policy boasted by the current government.
Even as the two characters John and Aga join each other on stage and begin their loaded dialogue, we learn that the bond between them is already played out. And, while John is still up for light flirtation, Aga – driven by poverty and need – has a more fiercely practical agenda. John, she reminds him, once breezily told her that, if there was anything she needed, she should come to him. She is now taking him at his word.
More from this author
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
MARY CONWAY recommends a beautifully judged performance that shines a light on the experience of all female war babies and boomers
A nervous year, showing that the theatre, like the world, stands on a precipice and seems uncertain where to jump
MARY CONWAY applauds a worthy revival of the US 1939 classic drama that studies the dehumanising consequences of affluence
