Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Rutherford and Son, National Theatre London
Contemporary parallels abound in a late Edwardian drama of an industrial oligarch on the rocks
Roger Allam
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
IN THE same week that British Steel was sabotaged by ruthless greed, this revival of Githa Sowerby’s 1912 play Rutherford and Son couldn’t be more timely.
Unlike the shady vultures behind that recent wrecking, here we get a personal portrait of the cold-hearted tyranny of John Rutherford (Roger Allam), whose third-generation Tyneside glassmaking business is beginning to crumble at the same time as his familial relations.
His three long-suffering children — Janet (Justine Mitchell), John Jnr (Sam Troughton) and Richard (Harry Hepple) — have spent their lives tiptoeing around “the Guv’nor” in a house with “not a scrape of love” in it. Janet cowers into a corner as he dresses down John Jnr, while the other women — his sister Ann (Barbara Marten) and daughter-in-law Mary (Anjana Vasan) — remain totally mute in his presence.
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