New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
When you can’t breathe, it ain’t funny
MARY CONWAY relishes a magnificent performance and the rich street language in a flawed depiction of racist police violence in downtown New York
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
ANA ISABEL NUNES points to the empowering legacy of Augusto Boal’s Theatre Of The Oppressed
CARLOS MARTINEZ welcomes the publication of the writings of the great Palestinian author, political theorist and spokesman for the PFLP
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE review Cottontail, Memoir of a Snail, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and Captain America: Brave New World
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by an account of the long history of Catholic Church’s involvement in espionage
ROGER McKENZIE welcomes an important contribution to the history of Africa, telling the story in its own right rather than in relation to Europeans
Between Riverside and Crazy
Hampstead Theatre, London
PLAYWRIGHT Stephen Adly Guirgis commands a dramatic niche all of his own as he immerses us in the hidden entrails of downtown New York in this Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy/drama from 2014.
Following his previously acclaimed works such as The Motherfucker With The Hat and Jesus Hopped The “A” Train, Guirgis returns to a world where the law and criminality, drugs and sobriety, truth and lies, God and retribution, duck and dive together until none is distinguishable from its opposite.
More from this author
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
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MAYER WAKEFIELD speaks to playwright Richard Bean about his new play Reykjavik that depicts the exploitation of the Hull-based “far-fleet” trawlermen
ALEX HALL revels in the fascinating details of village life unearthed by a model of local history research
GORDON PARSONS relishes a play that reveals how language carries much more than simple communication
MARY CONWAY is spellbound by an outstanding and relentless rendition of the universal family drama