A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis
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Brief lives brave lockdown
MARY CONWAY recommends a touching short drama on people trying to connect during the pandemic
REAL: Miriam Margolyes
MIK SABIERS savours the first headline solo show of the stalwart of Brighton’s indie-punk outfit Blood Red Shoes
New releases reviewed by IAN SINCLAIR
STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
Watching Rosie
Original Theatre Online
SHORT plays are catching on at a time when brief snippets of other people’s lives add colour and vigour to enforced domesticity and Watching Rosie — a miniature close-up of life in lockdown — is a little gem.
Written by Louise Coulthard and benefiting from a star cast, it’s a gentle, touching conversation between Rosie and her dementia-prone Gran. While the former is anxious and strained, Gran is coping, in a bemused sort of way, with an enforced lockdown imposed on her by a government who see her as a prime Covid risk.
Only when the doorbell rings and Gran leaps to the door for company, is there a sense of her desperate aloneness, otherwise masked by disconnected chit-chat interspersed with startling moments when her grasp on reality takes a sudden nose-dive.
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