CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
Road
Leeds Playhouse
THE HALLMARKS that brought Jim Cartwright to national prominence with The Rise and Fall Of Little Voice are all there in his debut play Road.
Premiered in 1986, and set in a working-class northern town decimated by the Thatcher government, it's largely written as a series of monologues, with roguish narrator Scullery (Joe Alessi) introducing the road’s inhabitants on Hayley Grindle’s split-level stage.
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
MIKE QUILLE applauds an excellent example of cultural democracy: making artworks which are a relevant, integral part of working-class lives
PAUL FOLEY welcomes a dramatic account of the men and women involved in the pivotal moment of the 5th Pan African Congress


