JOE GILL speaks to the Palestinian students in Gaza whose testimony is collected in a remarkable anthology
Bubble Man by Jonathan Taylor
When Cassy’s father fails to connect with his daughter — and misses out on
an evening in the Bitter End — a stranger’s self-mocking charm brings seething resentment.
[Illustration by Lewis Marsden]
MARY CONWAY delights in a rarely performed comedy that recalls a Britain we remember in our bones
JEAN ROBERTS appreciates the way traditional panto can be remodelled into critique of the academy schools system
MARY CONWAY is riveted by a superbly crafted glimpse into the soul of a cast-off US star
MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
THE square is full of bubbles. Bubbles everywhere. His daughter is dancing among them, as are twenty or so other children.
The children swarm round the man making the bubbles, who’s using a bent coat-hanger on a stick as a wand. He dips the wand into a bucket of suds, then waves it in an arc over their heads, conjuring a bubble-cosmos that swirls, spirals around them. They scatter outwards, the toddlers trying to catch the bubbles, the older children trying to pop them. Some bubbles sail far above their heads, over the shops and town hall, but most are gleefully exterminated.
Then the children are sucked inwards again, round the bubble man, mesmerised as he dips the coat hanger in the bucket, and waves it over their heads. Again they scatter, dance, giggle — kids and bubbles, all mixed up.
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