CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Medusa’s take on the Trojan Wars reveals a startling modern relevance
Deborah Pugh as Medusa
[Camilla Adams23]
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
Beautiful Evil Things
The Tobacco Factory
CO-CREATOR and solo performer Deborah Pugh illuminates the empty, dark stage with her 75-minute account of the Trojan Wars from the perspective of the petrifying gorgon Medusa. The riveting performance focuses on the roles of three women, enabling the female-centric narrative to provide a fresh reassessment of events.
Contextualising the three women with their backstories and ultimate fates woven into the decade-long war, Pugh's narrator is no longer seen as the ultimate horror but as one of three gorgon sisters tasked with being eternal record keepers, the guardians of truth.
Her refusal to edit their account for Zeus's sake leads to her transformation and ultimate brutalisation. This struggle for truth in a world dominated by males and their egos lies at the heart of this taut production.
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