MARIA DUARTE picks the best and worst of a crowded year of films
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The Night of The Iguana, Noel Coward Theatre, London
Production of a Tennessee Williams play doesn't live up to its promise
In disgrace: Clive Owen as Reverend Shannon
[Brinkhoff Moegenburg]
STEVE JOHNSON picks his favourites from the many memorable albums of the year, and one stunning new festival
SIMON DUFF picks his favourites, from radical African-inspired electronic rhythms to improvisations on the organ
For GORDON PARSONS, a dramatic exploration of the abuse of young men at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre trumps Beckett, a couple of Hamlets and a bracing Candide
From feminist manifestos to exiled lovers to mythic islands, LEO BOIX selects the best fiction, poetry and non-fiction
FIONA O’CONNOR picks books and films that show defiance in the face of violence and injustice
HEAVILY influenced by a summer Tennessee Williams spent in Tahiti in 1940, The Night of The Iguana is an odd mixture of elements.
It’s like a jigsaw puzzle whose striking individual pieces are all present but, assembled as a whole, fails to live up to expectations.
Rae Smith’s tropical set — a Mexican hotel that’s little more than a few corrugated shacks overlooking the sea adjoining an imposing rock face — is the faintly allegorical setting for a diverse group of people who, breaking or ending their journeys, deliberate on and remonstrate about their lives.
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SIMON PARSONS is beguiled by a dream-like exploration of the memories of a childhood in Hong Kong
JAN WOOLF finds out where she came from and where she’s going amid Pete Townshend’s tribute to 1970s youth culture
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
MARY CONWAY applauds a study of comedians in whose cheap prejudice the tenets of the emerging political right are crystal clear