RON JACOBS welcomes a timely history of the Anti Imperialist league of America, and the role that culture played in their politics
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Haunting Julia, Stephen Joseph Theatre
Ayckbourn chiller makes for easy seasonal listening
Haunting Julia
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By telling the story of a lawless frontier town from the point of view of the Lakota, Chinese labourers, prostitutes and displaced prospectors, makes for a potted history of capital, suggests ALEX HALL
TONY BURKE speaks to Gambian kora player SUNTOU SUSSO
MARIA DUARTE recommends a British boxing biopic about the stormy relationship between Nazeem Hamed and his trainer Brendan Ingle
ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Good Night, and Good Luck: Live from Broadway, Becoming Victoria Wood, Hamnet, and Song Sung Blue
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Filipino-US saxophonist JON IRABAGON about the threat of AI in the time of Musk and Trump, and how an artist can respond
A Christmas treat from Stephen Joseph Theatre, this audio recording of Haunting Julia by Alan Ayckbourn is a simple ghost story.
Ayckbourn, an abiding favourite with audiences, voices the three male parts as well as directing a narrative in which a grieving father tries to establish why his musical-genius daughter Julia took her own life. It’s seasonal, intriguing and a potential collector’s item.
Always deeply rooted in an English middle class whose ways go largely unchallenged, his comedies are an easy escape from grim reality.
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Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
MARY CONWAY recommends a play that some will find more discursive than eventful but one in which the characters glow
MARY CONWAY is stirred by a play that explores masculinity every bit as much as it penetrates addiction
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire