MAYER WAKEFIELD is chilled by the co-dependency of two lost souls as portrayed by German communist playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz
Culture


The Star's critics BRETT GREGORY, JOHN GREEN, MICHAEL BONCZA and ANGUS REID review The Stimming Pool, Misericordia, La Cocina, Irena’s Vow, and The End

CHRIS MOSS welcomes a radical history that brings marginalised stories and overlooked people and agencies to the centre

ANDREW HEDGECOCK relishes visual storytelling with no respect for genres, movements or styles

MARK TURNER is staggered by a gifted jazz pianist from the Welsh Valleys

JESSICA WIDNER explores how the twin themes of violence and love run through the novels of South Korean Nobel prize-winner Han Kang

SARAH TROTT explores short fictional slices of life in the American midwest from a middle-aged and mostly female perspective

New releases from Black Country, New Road, Anouar Brahem, and Jaywalkers

RICHARD CLARKE recommends a hugely valuable text for those seeking theoretical analysis and practical action to defend public services

JOHN HAWKINS is moved by an oral history that examines five black families pushed into homelessness in the US

BOB NEWLAND recommends an outstanding study of how images have shaped narratives of identity, resistance and power in South Africa

While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID

In an exhibition of the graphic art of Lorna Miller, MATT KERR takes a lungful of the oxygen of dissent

The Star's critics review The Sinking Of The Lisbon Maru, Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other, American Dreamer, When Autumn Falls, and Flow

ANGUS REID recommends an exquisite drama about the disturbing impact of the one child policy in contemporary China

GEORGE FOGARTY is mesmerised by the messages made when jazz is played by people who grew up steeped in jungle and hip-hop

MARK TURNER is thrilled by the the British singer’s tribute to the late great Sarah Vaughan

RITA DI SANTO speaks to Laura Carreira about her study of workers in an Amazon warehouse, On Falling

CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a film that focuses exclusively on women war artists, but deplores its omission of feminism, political context and Soviet anti-war art

BRETT GREGORY speaks with TOBY MANNING, author of Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music
by Lorraine Voss

DENNIS BROE points out that Apple is part of the corporate and state surveillance network which the new series Prime Target rails against

PAUL DONOVAN applauds a timely play that explores the resonances of McCarthyite nationalism in today’s US

Given the global plague of Agent Orange, the bard channels his energy into community self-help
by Steven Taylor

NICK WRIGHT delicately unpicks the eloquent writings on art of an intellectual pessimist who wears his Marxism lightly

MATTHEW HAWKINS appreciates an interpretation in dance of James Baldwin’s landmark novel of doomed homosexual desire

New releases from Jenn Butterworth, Liz Overs, and Gigspanner Big Band

SUSAN DARLINGTON applauds the translation of Jane Eyre into a ballet that preserves the drama of her formative years

STEF LYONS is swept along by the infectious energy of an ex-con single mother’s dreams of Nashville