Banksy’s identity may have been published – but was the investigation in the public interest, asks PETER BENGTSEN
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Laughing at, not with, the working class
LYNNE WALSH is left uneasy at the audience response to Rita, Sue and Bob Too
Assured performers: (From left) Gemma Dobson (Sue), Taj Atwal (Rita) and James Atherton (Rob)
[The Other Richard]
RON JACOBS recommends a book that charts the disparate circumstances that defined the lives of two prominent black Afro-Americans — one a communist, the other an anti-communist
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
SYLVIA HIKINS welcomes a survey of successful contemporary worker co-operatives and economy-based co-operative systems
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends the staging of this Wagnerian classic minus one or two insignificant quibbles
JOHN GREEN relishes the record of a life well lived in the service of the fight for justice and socialism
Rita, Sue and Bob Too
Royal Court, London/Touring
CO-PRODUCED by Out of Joint, Bolton Octagon and the Royal Court, this production, controversially cancelled and then reinstated by the London theatre, is an insubstantial version of Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
It’s tough to say that, especially given the acclaim which greeted the teenage Andrea Dunbar’s work. First performed in 1982 and made into a successful film soon afterwards, the play is semi-autobiographical. Dunbar’s life was bleak and she was dead at 29 after time in a women’s refuge and escalating problems with alcohol.
Her depiction of 15-year-old friends and their fling with a morosely married man won plaudits and the media loved Dunbar for a while.
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