MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
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US border warfare
SIMON PARSONS investigates a play that is neither a family drama representative of a polarised US, nor symbolic drama of violent isolationism
CHARACTER OR SYMBOL? Peter De Jersey as Vet in Suzan-Lori Parks The Book of Grace
[Alex Brenner] ![REBELS: Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar in Nadia Fall’s powerful debut feature Brides [Pic: IMDb]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-09/round%20up%20web_0.jpg.webp?itok=41xI6jhN)
MARY CONWAY recommends an early Shakespearean tragedy that feels so contemporary that it mirrors our daily news
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by a new play that loses its drama amid the moral dilemma of re-settling children in the aftermath of WWII
Acclaimed as a masterpiece when it premiered, this study of story-telling in an Irish pub more than lives up to expectations, says MARY CONWAY
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a comedy that dives deep into Liverpool’s divided loyalties
The Book of Grace
Arcola Theatre, London
THIS three-hander by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks could have been a straightforward domestic drama, with the return of an estranged son and former soldier to the house of his domineering, xenophobic, border-guard father, Vet, on the entreaty of his eternally optimistic wife, Grace, who believes reconciliation is possible.
The scaffold and barbed-wire border fence spanning the living room set, and the divergent opening monologues delivered by the isolated characters, immediately divests us of such a simple reading.
Vet, played with unpredictable hostility and simmering fury by Peter De Jersey, reveres the fence and his uniform. Ambivalent about his son’s return, he is concerned that Buddy will intrude on his vigilant isolationism and steal some of the limelight from an upcoming award ceremony in his honour.
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