Theatregoers suffering from First World War fatigue may want to pass on Jonathan Lynn’s merely competent historical drama about two mythic figures: Charles de Gaulle and Philippe Pétain. It’s a fascinating subject – de Gaulle had his former mentor tried … Continue reading
Following Farinelli and the King, here’s another gently aimless drama about opera and – more circuitously – the inestimable value of art. David Hare takes us back to 1934 and the birth of Glyndebourne, with Rae Smith’s design illustrating its … Continue reading
The pivotal early 1930s period in which Herr Hitler overcame strong if fractured left-wing opposition should make for meaty drama, but the sluggish polemic currently occupying Southwark Playhouse will leave carnivorous viewers unsatiated. American playwright Tony Kusher is rightly celebrated … Continue reading
“How long do you intend to draw this out?” So enquires German philosopher Adorno of his student-turned-extorter, who claims to possess the material influential academic Walter Benjamin smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Paris shortly before his death. Yet the question could … Continue reading
“It is the most effective indictment of Nazism to appear in fiction,” proclaimed The New York Times Book Review of American author Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s 1938 epistolary novella Address Unknown. Seventy-five years later, her work still packs a powerful punch in the form of … Continue reading
It’s not often you find yourself sympathising with both Communist and Nazi social policy, but that’s the unusual position one might be forced to take when viewing the compelling A Time to Reap at the Royal Court. Burgeoning Polish playwright … Continue reading
