Given the power of the live experience, MIK SABIERS recommends Jon Spencer’s new album
Blanket Ban
Southwark Playhouse
BLANKET BAN is as much activism as it is theatre.
Marta Vella and Davinia Hamilton, two Maltese Londoners, have created a startling call to action for abortion rights which is funny, illuminating, a little uneven and at points devastating.
With some of the most liberal social laws in Europe, 300 days of sunshine and a “party all the time” attitude to life, the Mediterranean island of Malta is initially painted as a paradise. That illusion is quickly shattered for one member of the audience in particular — this sheepish reviewer himself — who is jokingly chastised for Britain’s 150-year colonial rule.
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about a two-handed theatrical homage to jazz’s most mercurial musician
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth
MAYER WAKEFIELD relishes a witty and uplifting rallying cry for unity, which highlights the erasure of queer women


