MARJORIE MAYO, JOHN GREEN and MARIA DUARTE review Sudan, Remember Us, From Hilde, With Love, The Road to Patagonia, and F1
Latest editorial
Sublimely ridiculous duo strip Napoleon bare
Dynamic duo: Ayesha Antoine and Paul Hunter
MANJEET RIDON relishes a novel that explores the guilty repressions – and sexual awakenings – of a post-war Dutch bourgeois family
On the centenary of the birth of the anti-colonial thinker and activist Frantz Fanon, JENNY FARRELL assesses his enduring influence
New releases from Steve Tilston, FolkLaw, and Patch and the Giant
New releases from Madalitso Band, Gabriel da Rosa, and Femi Kuti
JOHN GREEN applauds an excellent and accessible demonstration that the capitalist economy is the biggest threat to our existence
Napoleon Disrobed
Arcola Theatre, London/Touring
UNCONDITIONAL love, an oasis of calm in a raging and chaotic sea of twisted identity and thwarted revolution, sits at the heart of Napoleon Disrobed.
Directed by the award-winning Kathryn Hunter, this sublimely ridiculous piece takes us on a journey of found love and lost cause.
A joint production with Theatre Royal Plymouth, Arcola Theatre and Told by an Idiot, it co-stars the latter’s co-founder and artistic director Paul Hunter and anarchic theatre is safe in his hands.
He kick-starts the evening with a University Challenge-style audience quiz delivered at breakneck speed, eliciting responses which provide Top Ten Facts about the Emperor Napoleon. Never has exposition worked so bafflingly well.
Based on the novel The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys, this alternative version of history imagines the military colossus escaping his exile on St Helena and making his way to France once more.
The notion that part of this flight involves storm-tossed seas followed by a leg of the journey via Eurostar is a delight. It's aided by Michael Vale's set — a joy, despite the risk of it inducing audience seasickness early on.
The exquisitely talented Ayesha Antoine, playing countless parts here, including a crying baby, is the perfect partner for Hunter. As his soulmate Ostrich, she mixes steely fortitude with a feather-bedded love, freely given and with no conditions.
The duo's abilities in shape-shifting characters and the dynamic between them add up to skilled stuff indeed. It’s seamless and utterly believable.
There’s a moment of immersive theatre along the way that provides a chilling pause. It feels like an intervention designed to trick a madman and we yearn for him to survive it with his real identity intact. A greater pause in the mayhem at this point might have created more melancholy.
Napoleon incognito searches in vain for a way back to victory. He does find love, though its unconditional and comfortable sweetness may be, for him, the doldrums. The unfinished revolution’s siren call is too much.
Rallying would-be comrades, he exhorts his audience to create diversions, moments and signs. Including a code word or phrase in French would work, he suggests. With that in mind, “N’oubliez pas les melons” if you play “pan-pong” anytime soon.
Runs until March 10, then tours until March 24, details: toldbyanidiot.org
More from this author
Caroline Darian, daughter of Gisele Pelicot, took part in a conversation with Afua Hirsch at London’s Royal Geographical Society. LYNNE WALSH reports
This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH
LYNNE WALSH previews the Bristol Radical History Conference this weekend
With most of recorded history dominated by the voices of men, LYNNE WALSH encourages sisters to read the memoirs of women – and to write their own too
