ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Best of 2018: London theatre
By MAYER WAKEFILED
Authentic: Ben Weatherill's Jellyfish
[Samuel Taylor]
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
IN ANOTHER year of political turmoil, London theatre certainly had something to say. At its best, it was responsive and highly vociferous on multiple fronts, ranging from #MeToo to inner-city social cleansing and much more besides.
Nicholas Hytner’s masterful production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the newly opened Bridge Theatre got the year off to a rip-roaring start.
Manipulating the audience both physically and mentally, Hytner employed a superb cast to inject the play with a raw immediacy that railed against power-hungry elites.
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KEITH RICHMOND relishes a superbly conceived modern version of Aeschylus’ drama of murderous family succession
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about a two-handed theatrical homage to jazz’s most mercurial musician
MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends a musical ‘love letter’ to black power activists of the 1970s