New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, John Luther Adams
Neighbourhood black watch
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
IT'S BEHIND YOU: The cast of A Good House, Amy Jeptha's South African satire of class relations
[Camilla Greenwell]
Banksy’s identity may have been published – but was the investigation in the public interest, asks PETER BENGTSEN
RON JACOBS recommends a book that charts the disparate circumstances that defined the lives of two prominent black Afro-Americans — one a communist, the other an anti-communist
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
SYLVIA HIKINS welcomes a survey of successful contemporary worker co-operatives and economy-based co-operative systems
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends the staging of this Wagnerian classic minus one or two insignificant quibbles
A Good House
Bristol Old Vic
AMY JEPTHA’s sharply observed satire on a gated community delves below the aspirational families’ concerns that hunker down there to explore the scars of racism and the state of post-apartheid South Africa.
In the ghost-like community of Stillwater it takes a mysterious shack appearing on a patch of wasteland to galvanise more than cursory interaction between the residents. Despite never seeing the inhabitants, its presence threatens their security from the physical to the financial, exposing the fears running beneath the surface of the growing class of the newly affluent.
The innate racism born of history is evident when the only black couple, Sihle and Bonolo, are chosen by the community’s newly created neighbourhood watch to be the sole signatories on an eviction notice for the shack dwellers. The unspoken fear that the invisible inhabitants are black cracks open hidden tensions.
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