Posts

Showing posts with the label Terrorism

Featured Post

Scenes from a marriage: Jab @parktheatre

Image
Jab takes us back to five years ago when no theatres were open. Instead, it was staying at home watching endless television, clapping for the NHS, mask-wearing and hand washing. Against this backdrop, isolation from a married couple of 29 years slowly drives them apart and to the brink. But while it captures the period well, you want to know more about this couple on the edge. It's currently playing at Park Theatre after its premiere run at the Finborough Theatre last year.  James McDermott's play is loosely based on his parent's lives during the pandemic. It opens with Ann (Kacey Ainsworth) and Don (Liam Tobin) watching the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson inform the nation they need to stay at home. She is an NHS worker, and he runs a vintage shop. As she is an essential worker, she has work to do, but he is forced to stay at home while his shop is closed. There's also another source of tension in that Anne brings in all the income in the household. And so we watch ...

Religion and fennel salad: Disgraced

Image
You feel like a voyeur watching Disgraced , the fiery Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Ayad Akhtar, at the Bush Theatre . Over the course of 90 minutes everything that is civilised and awfully respectable about two New York couples is gradually undone and at times the conversation is so frank and uncomfortable that you forget you are at the theatre. It turns sour in moments over a fennel salad. As each character presents their views on religion and racial discrimination in today's modern world, they stumble and fall over their arguments and soon there is no turning back from a car crash. It is funny and topical but perhaps a little unnerving, particularly as the recent events in Woolwich bring religion and terrorism back in focus.