New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams
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The heart of the Matti
DENISE MINA tells Angus Reid why she's updated Brecht's anti-capitalist satire to the era of zero-hours contracts and food banks
FORENSICALLY FUNNY: Denise Mina in rehearsal
GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an accessible - and optimistic - take on our relationship to new technology
JOHN GREEN suggests that a new, biased, and highly readable re-hash of the story of the Cambridge Five be taken with a large pinch of salt
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a timely reminder of the long history of protests and the outdoor spaces in which they takes place
MR PUNTILA and his Man Matti was Bertholt Brecht’s idea of a popular comedy — a sure-fire socialist crowd-pleaser. He believed in the play so much that in 1948 he used it to launch the Berliner Ensemble, the legendary theatre company whose practice still resonates globally.
He wrote it in Finland in 1940 while he hopped from country to country, staying one step ahead of the nazi occupations of European countries. Among his work of that period it is the odd one out, being entirely to do with economic relations and nothing to do with the war.
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