MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
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By far the best Bard production of the year
An ideal balance between comedy and gravity in riveting Shakespeare reinvention, suggests MAYER WAKEFIELD
M4M
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
Measure for Measure
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
ABUSE of power. Check. Corruption. Check. Predatory male behaviour. Check. Draconian measures. Check. A sprinkle of pantomime. Check.
Blanche McIntyre’s Measure for Measure couldn’t be timelier. But rather than locate it in the here and now she’s transposed Shakespeare’s quintessential “problem play” into the 1970s, with James Cotterill’s design finding a happy medium between Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Austin Powers.
There is a sneaky reference to the three-day week as the electronic lighting flickers until the candles which usually light the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse take over. It’s the first of many clever devices which characterise this perceptive production.
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