JOE GILL speaks to the Palestinian students in Gaza whose testimony is collected in a remarkable anthology
Phoenix by Sadie Jemmett
Nice enough but musically mundane
MARY CONWAY delights in a rarely performed comedy that recalls a Britain we remember in our bones
JEAN ROBERTS appreciates the way traditional panto can be remodelled into critique of the academy schools system
MARY CONWAY is riveted by a superbly crafted glimpse into the soul of a cast-off US star
MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
Sadie Jemmett
Phoenix
(TwoUpTwoDown Records)
IF YOU like MOR US artists like Mary Chapin Carpenter, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Gretchen Peters, then the new album from English singer-songwriter Sadie Jemmett will sound familiar.
A collection of Radio 2-friendly country-folk songs, she moves easily between confessional and introspective ballads and more worldly concerns. Don’t Silence Me takes on the #MeToo movement — “Take your hands off my sister/Didn’t you hear her say NO?” — while The Wilder Shores of Love deals with the refugee crisis.
On Good Friday she sounds a lot like Alanis Morissette, while Leonard’s Waltz finds her talking Brexit, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen.
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