ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Surrealistic take on plight of migrants
Using magic realism to highlight the problems of migrants does not sit easily with the harsh reality, says SIMON PARSONS
Diyar Bozkur, Safiyya Ingar and Meera Syal in King Troll
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
King Troll (The Fawn)
New Diorama Theatre
THREATENED with traumatic Home Office interviews to prove their 20-year unbroken residency and avoid deportation, sisters Nikita and Riya face insecure futures in a country they call their home.
The play starts out as a naturalistic drama about the injustices encountered by migrants both in the system and with our society in general but takes a surreal twist when they turn for help to a former friend of their deceased mother. Somewhere between Meera Syal’s grandmother in The Kumar’s at No 42 and a crude, socially embittered witch, she offers them a chance of freedom in the form of a magical jar, supposedly capable of producing a servile fawn — a fairy tale advocate or personal genie to solve all their problems.
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