MARY CONWAY applauds the revival of a tense, and extremely funny, study of men, money and playing cards
Snowflake, Kiln Theatre London
Mike Bartlett's Christmas cracker an antidote for post-election blues
ON NEUTRAL GROUND: Elliot Levey and Amber James in Snowflake
MEHDI ACHOUCHE explores the constant fascination of cinema with Marxist alienation from Fritz Lang and Chaplin to Bong Joon Ho
FIONA O’CONNOR steps warily through a novel that skewers many of the exposed flanks of the over-privileged
MARY CONWAY applauds the study of a dysfunctional family set in an Ireland that could be anywhere
MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
THERE was a danger that the restaging of Mike Bartlett’s Snowflake could suffer from a sense of outdated despondency, focusing as it does on the familial tensions resulting from the EU referendum.
But, a year on from its initial outing at Oxford’s Old Fire Station, its healing power remains undiminished and it finds new resonance as the toxic dust of the latest vote begins to settle.
Its first half is wholly devoted to the twitchy self-loathing of the lonely forty-something Andy (Elliot Levey), who has evidently not recovered from losing his wife to cancer and has resorted to blaming the “creeping collapse of human dignity” for the estrangement of his daughter Maya (Ellen Robertson).
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