Sometimes a playwright seizes history by the throat, shakes it like a terrier with a stolen bone, and shouts: ‘Look at this — don’t you dare look away again.’ Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is one such moment: a gangster parable masquerading as a clown show, a political sermon delivered by a … Continue reading The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui: A Morality Play for a World That Has Mislaid Its Morals
Category: Theatre
Ubu Roi: The Crown, the Curse, and the Colossal Belly of Human Folly
If Gogol showed us corruption, and Beckett showed us despair, then Alfred Jarry — bizarre, bicycle-riding prophet of the avant-garde — showed us what happens when civilisation finally gives up pretending to be civil. Ubu Roi isn’t a play; it’s a cultural detonation, a theatrical act of vandalism so gleefully grotesque that even today it … Continue reading Ubu Roi: The Crown, the Curse, and the Colossal Belly of Human Folly
The Government Inspector: A Farce in Which Humanity Trips Over Its Own Shadow
Been a while since I looked at a play. So.. There are moments in literature when I realise the human race isn’t merely flawed but gloriously, catastrophically absurd. Gogol understood this long before Beckett ever let Vladimir and Estragon wander out onto a dusty road to wait for a man who’d never come. If Waiting … Continue reading The Government Inspector: A Farce in Which Humanity Trips Over Its Own Shadow
King & Conqueror: A Royal Mess of Mud, Murk, and Misfires
History, we’re often told, is written by the victors. But in the BBC’s latest offering, King & Conqueror, history is rewritten by screenwriters who appear to have skimmed a Wikipedia stub, lit a few candles in a cowshed, and declared themselves medievalists. The premise was promising. Harold Godwinson versus William the Bastard - England’s last … Continue reading King & Conqueror: A Royal Mess of Mud, Murk, and Misfires
Wilde’s Salomé: A Decadent Dance with Death
It’s almost too neat that Salomé should have been written in French. The language of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and decadence itself lent Wilde the perfect tongue for blasphemy dressed in silks. The Victorians expected their theatre to teach morality, to improve the soul, to extol duty. Wilde offered them instead a necrophilic waltz in candlelight, where … Continue reading Wilde’s Salomé: A Decadent Dance with Death
Wording 