TONY BURKE plots the career of the legendary Senegalese band from Dakar nightclubs to Glastonbury
The Constituent
The Old Vic, London
IT’S rare, in the current climate, to explore the intimate life of a good, well-meaning MP, but Joe Penhall’s The Constituent does just that.
Monica, played with earnest conviction by Anna Maxwell Martin, is an opposition backbencher, bravely fielding responsibility at every turn. Personally, she’s an overstretched wife, daughter and mum; professionally her time is filled — not so much with the glamour of Westminster but with a relentless stream of troubled constituents at her regular surgery.
MARY CONWAY keeps up with the sheer pace of a drama about the terrible gap between sanitised reporting and real-life turmoil of race and gender
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth
JAN WOOLF is beguiled by the tempting notion that Freud psychoanalysed Hitler in a comedy that explores the vulnerability of a damaged individual


