| | | 'The pendulum has swung': Why we female Trinidadian writers are having our moment | | by Monique Roffey May 3, 2022 | | Monique Roffey, the Costa-winning author of The Mermaid of Black Conch, on the lit-boom that’s happening on the Caribbean island Last week, Trinidadian writer Lisa Allen-Agostini’s novel The Bread the Devil Knead, landed a coveted spot on the Women’s prize shortlist. As a fellow Trinidadian writer, this is both exciting and unsurprising. These days Trinidad is producing world-class female writers hand over fist. Allen-Agostini’s shortlisting comes on the heels of the announcement, two weeks ago, that Trinidadian writer, Amanda Smyth, made the Walter Scott prize for historical fiction shortlist, the only woman on the list, and the first Caribbean writer ever to be chosen. Meanwhile, Celeste Mohammed has become the fifth woman (and third Trinidadian woman) to win Trinidad’s regional OCM Bocas prize. Something has happened in Trinidad, in our small but dense hothouse of a literary world. Perhaps it’s 12 years of the Bocas literary festival, or five waves of feminism, or maybe it’s to do with the internet opening up opportunities for those from developing countries, but in the last decade Trinidad has produced a host of outstanding female writers. It’s a trend that anyone in Caribbean literary circles knows about. Myself, Smyth, Allen-Agostini, Mohammed and others, are part of a “lit-boom”, and most of this boom is female. We are finding ourselves on the global stage, on prestigious shortlists in North America and the UK. This huge generational and gender shift would have been unthinkable only 15 years ago. Continue reading... | | | | | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness review – cheerful alt-reality sequel | | by Peter Bradshaw May 3, 2022 | | Benedict Cumberbatch returns as surgeon-superhero Stephen Strange, now on a mission to protect a teen who can visit parallel universes We are back in the bizarre rococo world – or actually now worlds – of Doctor Strange, Marvel’s mindbending surgeon-turned-superhero who is played with sonorous conviction by Benedict Cumberbatch. He strides unselfconsciously around in a velveteen outfit accessorised with pointy cloak, jet-black goatee and low hairline of pin-sharp definition – similar to the late James Lipton, presenter of TV’s Inside the Actors Studio. Sam Raimi takes over directing duties from the first film’s Scott Derrickson and brings to it essentially the same lite-scary/action aesthetic. As ever, there is a pert tai chi discipline to the little circular sparkly shapes and mystical cosmic portholes that Dr Strange creates with swivelling hand-movements, and he flies through the air in the accepted style, not facing down flat with one fist out like Superman, but upright, right leg elegantly bent at the knee, arms extended backwards. Now Strange has to get his formidable head around the multiverse, a universe of infinite alternative possibilities – and this idea, which other movies have treated with tiresome stoner-seriousness, is handled with cheerful humour and boisterously surreal melodrama. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is released on 5 May in Australia and the UK, and on 6 May in the US. Continue reading... | | | | | Five Characters in Search of a Good Night's Sleep review – disjointed bedtime stories | | by Arifa Akbar May 3, 2022 | | Southwark Playhouse, London
ViSiBLE Theatre Ensemble’s play underexplores the effects of insomnia on its characters, who deliver a series of fragmented monologues A play about insomnia is welcome relief for many of us who stew, bug-eyed, into the small hours and know that sleeplessness bears its own maddening drama. Directed by Mike Alfreds, it begins promisingly, with five characters in pyjamas making snarky asides about other people’s useless advice for their malaise (yoga, magnesium flakes, breathing and body scans). They pull up chairs and begin speaking in alternating snatches of their nightly torments, daily burdens, former lives and past loves. The central conceit around the lack of sleep and its effects is disappointingly underexplored and seems, instead, like an excuse for characters to give us personal histories and disjointed vignettes. They do not interact with each other but give us thoughts and memories in isolation; as one talks the others recline in states of anguish – head in hands, slumped, hugging a chair or the wall. Mystifyingly, they speak of themselves in the first and third person, sometimes switching between the two in the same sentence, which is jarring and brings oddness to the storytelling. Continue reading... | | | | | 'Paparazzo extraordinaire': Ron Galella – a life in pictures | | by Arnel Hecimovic May 3, 2022 | | Ron Galella, nicknamed the Godfather of US paparazzi, has died at his New Jersey home aged 91. The photographer gained notoriety for his candid shots and celebrity feuds, including with Jackie Onassis and Marlon Brando – who punched him outside a New York restaurant and broke his jaw Continue reading... | | | | | |
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