The Guardian - Culture - new message

The Guardian - Culture Edit Unfollow The Crucible review – stylish restaging is all beauty and no bite by Arifa Akbar Sep 29, 2022 National Theatre, London Director Lyndsey Turner misses the opportunity to give Arthur Miller’s allegory modern resonance with a too-faithful interpretation Arthur Miller’s play used the Salem witch trials as an allegory for McCarthy-era hysteria but it is masterful, and elastic, enough to accommodate a host of modern-day parables. That is not what we see here. Lyndsey Turner’s production keeps it in its original context and the play feels like a handsomely raised period piece. Beautifully staged, it is an almost entirely faithful interpretation and feels safe for it. Where its world might have borne more resonances to the group-think and scapegoating that recent populist narratives have peddled, its faithfulness pushes its themes back to the past, to Puritan fundamentalism, a time of theocracy and the search for a New Jerusalem, without bringing anything substantially new or imaginative to the stage – other than its aesthetics. Continue reading... Continue Reading The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones review – portrait of an artist by Suzi Feay Sep 29, 2022 A fascinating meditation on Black female creativity from the author of Corregidora and Palmares American author Gayl Jones is powering into her eighth decade with a new novel only a year after the publication of her epic tale of slavery in Brazil, Palmares, which itself appeared after a 20-year hiatus. While briefer and lighter in tone, The Birdcatcher has grim moments. An offstage character mutilates her genitals with the mirror from a compact, and Catherine, the sculptor at the heart of the novel, continually tries to kill her beloved husband, Ernest. Without the constant vigilance of the novel’s narrator, Amanda, she would succeed. As a meditation on female creativity, it forms a fascinating bookend to Jones’s debut, the bruising Corregidora. Published in 1975 when she was in her mid-20s, that novel centres on Ursa, a 1940s blues singer brutalised and exploited by her partners, while bearing the historic burden of slavery in the form of horror stories handed down through the generations. (Corregidora is the name of Ursa’s despised ancestor, a Portuguese slave owner who raped not only his slaves but the children he fathered on them.) Continue reading... Continue Reading

Follow more feeds You have a website? Also use follow.it - it has many advantages. To unsubscribe please click on the "Unfollow"-link next to the feed's title or click here to unfollow several feeds in one go. This email was sent by follow.it. However, the contents of this email are provided by the publisher of the feeds you are following. follow.it is not affiliated with those publishers in any way nor do we take any responsibility for their content. If you want to report content which does not adhere to our Terms of Use please contact us. lnisev Ltd., 11407 SW Amu St, Suite #AAM624, Tualatin, OR 97062, USA