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
Tag: Literature
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
The Scarlet Letter – Sin, Society, and the Theatre of Virtue
The Scarlet Letter is a work so suffused with moral intensity that even the commas seem to blush. Hawthorne’s Puritan New England is a place where daylight feels like cross-examination, and every whisper sounds like scripture. Sin, here, isn't merely an act — it’s a neighbourhood watch. The story begins, quite literally, with a symbol … Continue reading The Scarlet Letter – Sin, Society, and the Theatre of Virtue
Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
Northern pilgrimages — those walks that feel less like a journey to a holy place and more like a negotiation with eternity. Down south, a pilgrimage is a gentle stroll between tea rooms, the sort of thing you might undertake with a guidebook and sensible shoes. Up here, the guidebook will be soaked within a … Continue reading Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
Wording 