Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
A sour taste of the black British experience
MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends an emotionally charged drama on a family caught between two cultures
PIC CAP Disconsolate: Tok Stephen as Alvin with Debra Michaels (Vernice) Pic: Helen Murray
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
Strange Fruit
Bush Theatre London
FOLLOWING a superb revival of Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking last summer, the Bush Theatre continue their Passing the Baton initiative by staging this debut work by Kittitian-British writer Caryl Phillips.
Now better known as a novelist, Phillips was just 21 when Strange Fruit was first produced at the Sheffield Crucible in 1979. For someone of such youth it is a flawed yet remarkable work, as is Nancy Medina’s current production.
As you enter the theatre through the beaded doorway, you encounter Max Johns’s design incorporating all the classic features of a traditional West Indian sitting room — a ceramic pineapple, a stack of records, a portrait of the queen.
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