As wikipedia tells it, so incensed was the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen at the public uproar following his new play Ghosts (a haunting account of a charitable mother whose son, a nice young man, goes bonkers having inherited syphilis from his slutty father), that he then wrote … … An Enemy of the People (1882), a… Read more »
Author: Alx Phillips
REVIEW: El policía de las ratas – dir. Àlex Rigola / cia. Heartbreak Hotel
El policía de las ratas (Police Rat) is a wonderfully intense Spanish-language 2-man play directed by Àlex Rigola. It is based on the short story by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, “one of the most improbable international literary celebrities since William Burroughs”, according to the New York Times (who doesn’t give any further explanation). Possibly the… Read more »
WHAT’S ON? À la ville de … Barcelona, dir. Joan Ollé
0 0 1 358 2045 17 4 2399 14.0 Normal 0 false false false ES-TRAD JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:ES-TRAD; mso-fareast-language:JA;} Anyone who has spent any length of time in the mediterranean city of… Read more »
REVIEW: Chris Killip – Trabajo/Work – Reina Sofia, Madrid
Photographer Chris Killip, born in Douglas on the Isle of Man, spent 16 years in Newcastle upon Tyne during the 1970s and ’80s. His images of the region’s industrial workers were published in the book In Flagrante (1988) with another series Seacoal (1985) documenting the lives of the villagers of nearby Lynemouth, who made their living fishing scrap coal out of the North Sea. In… Read more »
REVIEW: Un Trozo Invisible de Este Mundo by Juan Diego Botto
Teatre Lliure – Barcelona until September 29, 2013 The scene is set like a graveyard for dead baggage. A conveyor belt-cum-catwalk splits the stage, churning out luggage at varying speeds and quantities, some shrink-wrapped, some fancy, some battered and broken; without address tags or flight information, they seem mysteriously to vanish once they drop off… Read more »
WHAT’S ON? Tragèdies Romanes (Roman Tragedies) Toneelgroep Amsterdam
Teatre Lliure Montjuic, July 6th – 7th, 2013 With the Egyptian mess splashed all over the media, you don’t need to have read William Shakespeare’s triple-political-whammy of Roman tragedies, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, in any language, to feel a familiar sense of involvement yet distance, shock yet predictability, a sense of being… Read more »
REVIEW: L’Onada (The Wave) dir. Marc Montserrat Drukker
Since time immemorial emotional impact has meant more than logic. More exciting, more dynamic and more persuasive than its grumbling counterpart – that harps on about niggling things, like fact and detail, profundity and practicality – it is ‘impulse’ or, euphemistically speaking, ‘intuition’ that packs the punch behind instant big decisions. Thus, we spent thousands… Read more »
WHAT’S ON? Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, dir. David Selvas
After the phenomenal success of A Dolls House (1879), Hedda Gabler (1891) by Norwegian master playwright Henrik Ibsen, didn’t go down that well with late 19th century audiences. Instead of overtly attacking the establishment, most particularly the crappy controlled lives of women, Hedda was considered an arrogant, power-crazed, unfeeling figure – a study in mental illness,… Read more »
REVIEW: L’Estranger (L’Étranger – The Stranger) by Albert Camus, dir. Carles Alfaro
A surprisingly effective dramatization of Albert Camus‘ unsettling little novel L’Étranger (1942) (The Stranger in English, L’Estranger in Catalan) puts existential angst back on the table. Adapted by Rodolf Sirera and Carles Alfaro, who directed the play at the Gràcia Lliure theatre in Barcelona, L’Estranger is staged with perfect simplicity. The setting throughout the single-act performance is the prison cell from… Read more »
REVIEW: Don Giovanni – Teatro Real (Madrid)
A mafia-esque setting for a Teatro Real (Madrid) co-production of Mozart’s blinding opera, Don Giovanni, raises disturbing questions about the alleged ‘virtue’ of the other characters… Don Giovanni is based on the old morality tale of the inveterate womanizer, whose past catches up with him with supernatural drama. The play version was first plumed by Spaniard Tirso de… Read more »