CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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Timely satire on lessons unlearned from ‘war to end all wars’
Impish: Martyn Jacques
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
The Last Days of Mankind
Leith Theatre, Edinburgh
CONCEIVED for a theatre on Mars, a full performance of The Last Days of Mankind would stretch over 10 days measured in earthly time. Audiences could not bear it, said Karl Kraus of his searing jeremiad inveighing against the madness and futility of war, written in the immediate aftermath of WWI.
Fronted by the Tiger Lillies, whose trademark cadaverous make-up is a perfect fit, an ensemble cast from across Europe plays out the tragedy as macabre vaudeville in the salubrious environs of a bourgeois Viennese cafe.
Between the pitch-perfect songs inciting the audience throughout to die, starve and slave for their country, performed with delicious impishness by Martyn Jacques, the cast effortlessly conjure the jingoistic fervour escalating from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
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