“The dream has gone but the baby is real,” wrote Delaney and warbled Morrissey; one thing remains certain — the dream has definitely gone. Bijan Sheibani’s 2019 rendition of A Taste of Honey does Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 cult classic a great disservice. Depicting the tempestuous mother-daughter relationship of Jo and Helen in post-war, working-class Salford, […]
Content warning: sexual assault, victim blaming Camille Paglia’s self-affirmation as an advocate of gender equality could not be further from the truth. In her most recent selection of essays, Free Women, Free Men, Paglia leaps from topic to topic, covering subjects from the hyper-masculinity of football culture to issues of modern sex education. Whilst the breadth […]
In his most recent novel, Sebastian Barry returns with a beguiling epic, exploring the intricacy of human relationships with America’s Civil War years as a brutal backdrop. Days Without End is something of a ‘Civil War Odyssey’, depicting the life of Thomas McNulty – a consciously compassionate and complex protagonist – following his arrival to […]
Michael Frayn’s 2003 play Democracy combines politics with the downfall of trust. Delving into the infamous Guillaume Affair, it documents the real life events of the highly commended, Nobel Peace Prize winning Willy Brandt, played by Tom Hodgkins. The show teaches us of his appointment as the first Left Wing Chancellor of West Germany in […]