LIKE I say, I get around. Sometimes, though, I even surprise myself.
ENO's production of La Boheme is a triumph,
Star critics cherry-pick some of the best on offer in the weeks to come
Bradford Theatre
A Muslamic Love Story
Theatre At The Mill, Bradford University
June 7 and 8
This new play from Nick Ahad (pictured) explores the untold story of racial and gay politics in modern Britain. It follows the lives of Dan and Kasim, a mixed-race gay couple living in fear and happiness in a northern town. Kasim cannot reconcile being both gay and Muslim and when a black British man comes into their lives, his views on race, Islam and homosexuality brings their relationship and much else into question. Racism, homophobia and Islamophobia are addressed in the play and if you like issue-based theatre, this should more than fit the bill.
London Cartooning
Ben Jennings
Illustration & Visual Communication Show 2012
University of Westminster
Marylebone Road London NW1
Until June 13
Included in this final-year student show is the work of Ben Jennings, who started drawing cartoons for the Morning Star in September last year. The measure of his talent is that he scooped the Political Cartoonist of the Year awarded by the Political Cartoon Society ahead of such established and popular practitioners as Steve Bell, Martin Rowson and Dave Brown. Jennings is a superb draughtsman and has a wicked and appropriately venomous sense of humour as the work he's showing here demonstrates.
Manchester Music
The Lady: A Homage To Sandy Denny
Bridgwater Hall
Lower Mosley Street
This evening of classic songs by folk icon Sandy Denny features a brilliant line-up - Joan Wasser, Maddy Prior, Jerry Donahue, Dave Swarbrick, Green Gartside, PP Arnold and Thea Gilmore (pictured), to name only a few. In the years since her tragic death in 1978, Denny has become widely regarded as Britain's finest female singer-songwriter and one of the greatest singers this country has ever produced and this show is the first ever to celebrate her entire musical legacy, encompassing her work with Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and her solo career. Final date in tour.
Newcastle Installation
Here
The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays
Until May 31
The three audio-visual art installations by Elizabeth Price which comprise Here fuse music, text and visual images in a brilliant evocation and critique of commodity culture. In Price's imagined world it is objects, not humans, that have desires, hopes and movements. West Hinder, based on the real-life sinking of a ship containing 3,000 luxury cars, uses archive footage and text based on car adverts to express the desire and fascination with cars as commodities - but at the same time to suggest how art can stimulate the collective will and effort to break these fetishistic bonds. As a contemporary artistic expression of Marx's critique of commodity fetishism, it's well worth a visit.
If you appreciated this article then please consider donating to the Morning Star's Fighting Fund to ensure we can keep developing your paper.
Printable
Email