ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher

THE impromptu Arthur Miller season of six of his plays performed in Britain since the start of the year culminates in this production, with an all-star cast led by Wendell Pierce of The Wire and Suits fame and directed by the multiaward-winning duo of Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell.
But for all that star power this Death of a Salesman falls a little short of its sales pitch.
Anna Fleischle’s brutalist concrete set is where the cracks begin to surface. Trapping the action in such austere confines makes it difficult to imagine the mid-1940s US East Coast where Willy Loman’s life unravels and with the costumes and props so clearly located in the period it’s an anomalous contrast difficult to ignore.

MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends a musical ‘love letter’ to black power activists of the 1970s

MAYER WAKEFIELD speaks to Urielle Klein-Mekongo about activism, musical inspiration and the black British experience

MAYER WAKEFIELD is swept up by the tale of the south London venue where music forged alliances across race, class and identity

MAYER WAKEFIELD applauds Rosamund Pike’s punchy and tragic portrayal of a multi-tasking mother and high court judge