ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
Latest editorial
Shock tactics fail to generate empathy
SIMON PARSONS recommends a thought-provoking play about the long-term impact of traumatic childhoods and the morality of accepting the rehabilitation of social outcasts
POWERFUL ACTING: Abigail Hood as Kayleigh Grey and Emma Keele as Rebecca Hastie
[Ben Wilkin]
KEITH RICHMOND relishes a superbly conceived modern version of Aeschylus’ drama of murderous family succession
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a minimalist installation that prompts intriguing connotations
FIONA O’CONNOR questions the achievement of this year’s Orwell prize winner for political fiction
LEO BOIX reviews two powerful Latin American novels in which myth and crime fiction expose the deadly consequences of patriarchy, clandestine abortion and state violence
New releases from Laura Veirs, The Waterboys, and Yard Act
Ron's rages are sincere and — according to his wife — healthily cathartic. But can these splenetic outbursts loosen the grip of capitalism at its most monstrous?
Monster
Park Theatre
ABIGAIL HOOD’S well-constructed naturalistic drama opens with two teenage Glaswegian girls hanging out, flirting and fantasising after school on a patch of wasteland, symbolic of their lives.
The Monster, played by Hood, is Kayleigh — a bright, bitter and damaged youngster whose home life with an abusive mother on the game is a living nightmare.
When her girlfriend finally deserts her for a boy, her instinctive response is an appalling act of violence towards the only adult who has paid her any attention.
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GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
SIMON PARSONS is beguiled by a dream-like exploration of the memories of a childhood in Hong Kong