Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
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Mr E’s adventures in Cartoonland
SUSAN DARLINGTON applauds a play that explores the role that imagination can play for children growing up through trauma
Stefan Davis in Please Right Back
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
Please Right Back
Leeds Playhouse
TWO people in dunce’s caps mutely hand out pencils to the audience. A voiceover explains that the story we’re about to watch could be based on real life, or it could be a work of fiction. It’s unclear how, or indeed if, the various elements relate but if you sit back and let 1927’s “dysfunctional family show” wash over you, it does begin to make sense.
Framed within the tropes of film noir, the multimedia play opens with Mr E (Stefan Davis) being instructed to hand over a briefcase to a mysterious Mr Jones. In scenes reminiscent of classic Hitchcock, the case is stolen and he must go on a special mission to retrieve it before he can return home to his family.
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MARY CONWAY admires an accomplished drama that explores the consequences of a fatal punch on a desolate housing estate
SUSAN DARLINGTON applauds a one-man show that navigates racist barriers to tell the story of the black pilot, boxer and jazz musician
SIMON PARSONS questions whether a dark take on Shakespeare’s Seasonal comedy is in harmony with the original text
SUSAN DARLINGTON is unmoved by a production full of spectacular tableax but without emotional connection to the characters