STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
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Snowflake, Kiln Theatre London
Mike Bartlett's Christmas cracker an antidote for post-election blues
ON NEUTRAL GROUND: Elliot Levey and Amber James in Snowflake
[Manuel Harlan]
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
JAN WOOLF relishes an extensive history of our long relationship to trees in Britain that underlines the current emergency
DIANE WATT argues that while evidence of sex is not there, a 16th‑century lesbian poet could be Scotland’s answer to Gentleman Jack
THERE was a danger that the restaging of Mike Bartlett’s Snowflake could suffer from a sense of outdated despondency, focusing as it does on the familial tensions resulting from the EU referendum.
But, a year on from its initial outing at Oxford’s Old Fire Station, its healing power remains undiminished and it finds new resonance as the toxic dust of the latest vote begins to settle.
Its first half is wholly devoted to the twitchy self-loathing of the lonely forty-something Andy (Elliot Levey), who has evidently not recovered from losing his wife to cancer and has resorted to blaming the “creeping collapse of human dignity” for the estrangement of his daughter Maya (Ellen Robertson).
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