When Cassy’s father fails to connect with his daughter — and misses out on
an evening in the Bitter End — a stranger’s self-mocking charm brings seething resentment.
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GORDON PARSONS admires a version of Marlowe’s grim tragedy that strips it down to its gay essentials
The Bard encounters Laibach’s revival of their 1987 album Opus Dei, and is stirred to verse
ANDREW MURRAY is compelled by the moment of revolution in British history when Parliament had political intimacy with society
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE Reviews of Twiggy, Mickey 17, Day of the Fight, and Marching Powder
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes a masterful study of gang behaviour in the favelas of Sao Paulo
Helen Colley introduces this year’s ScreenCuba film festival with an exclusive offer to Morning Star readers
DENNIS BROE appreciates the work of TV writer Steven Knight, and his systematic exposure of the debilitating effects of British capitalism
Edward II
The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’S grim tragedy is, understandably perhaps, the least often featured of his plays on the modern stage. With our contemporary fixation with LBGT+ concerns, it is not surprising that the RSCS artistic directors should have decided that the time is ripe for an airing.
Daniel Evans, one of those directors, stars in Daniel Raggett’s new pared-down production.
It can be no spoiler for most people who will see this play to recognise that its focal point is necessarily the final horrific rape and murder of a weak and ineffectual king whose obsession with sexual “frolicking with his minion” at the expense of his country’s good brings about his downfall.
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The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes