EWAN CAMERON picks out two fascinating music shows, fusing the Korean, and the Celtic, with the modern
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
[Helen Murray]
BENJAMIN POTHIER suggests that Palaeolithic cave paintings in Spain point to the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic flora
The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments
MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
JOHN GREEN relishes a powerful and moving drama that explores the lived realities of west London’s Punjabi community
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
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.
Similar stories
Family issues and dragon-fuelled history amount to a vacuous spectacle that ill-fits the theatre, muses SIMON PARSONS
SIMON PARSONS applauds the timely revival of a play about solidarity and betrayal within Britain’s Pakistani community
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship