Tag Archives: Civil Rights

The Time of Our Lies

Park Theatre, London ****
Runs: 65 mins without interval
Review of perf seen Aug 1, 2019:

© Tomas Turpie, Jessye Romeo (foreground) and the cast in Che Walker's visceral, blood drenched production of Bianca Bagatourian's memoir of American anti-war and political activist/historian Howard Zinn.

© Tomas Turpie, Jessye Romeo (foreground) and the cast in Che Walker’s visceral, blood drenched production of Bianca Bagatourian’s memoir of American anti-war and political activist/historian Howard Zinn.

There is much in Bianca Bagatourian’s The Time Of Our Lies that reminded me of George Brant’s Grounded, the play that told the story an American woman drone pilot and in so doing brought home the dehumanising effect of modern warfare on those shielded by distance but not by the after-effects of sensing the violence they were inflicting on other human beings.  Continue reading

One Night in Miami…

Donmar Warehouse, London (****)

© Johann Persson, Sope Dirisu (Cassius Clay), David Ajala (Jim Brown)

© Johann Persson, Sope Dirisu (Cassius Clay), David Ajala (Jim Brown)

Music can move mountains, although for Malcolm X it wasn’t moving fast enough. In Kemp Powers pulsating, extraordinarily topical account of four African-American legends meeting one night in a hotel room in Miami, the Black Power activist was calling out Sam Cooke, the singer-songwriter, later dubbed the `King of Soul’, for not putting his God-given gifts sufficiently at the service of `the movement’ for Civil Rights. Continue reading