Wyndham’s theatre, London Grant brings shock-haired vigour as a vain novelist forced to welcome his boho children’s surprise guests in comedy of clipped social embarrassment Hay Fever, now one of Noël Coward’s best-known and most-performed works, hasn’t always been a smash hit. British critics who found its West End debut in 1925 amusing enough nevertheless noted its lack of plot, and the first Broadway production was a flop. A critic for Vogue called it “funny in places”, which sounds like the kind of stinging putdown you’d expect from the playwright’s own hand. A century of performances have proved the play’s lasting power, but its comic effect has always lain less in the words as written than their delivery – it is, after all, about a family that is “artificial to the point of lunacy”. At their centre is diva Judith Bliss, who has retired from the stage to take up the role of country hostess. When she, her husband and their self-consciously bohemian childre...
The activist risks jail after refusing to ‘correct’ online posts criticising Singapore’s death penalty and drug laws, a first in the city state under its ‘Pofma’ act
Kokila Annamalai, a prominent Singaporean activist, has spent years supporting death row inmates and their families as they fight to avoid execution. So, when she was ordered by the government to share a “correction” on social media that countered criticisms she had made of Singapore’s laws, and accused death row inmates of “abusing” the justice system, she felt compelled to take a stand.
“Death row prisoners are one of the most voiceless and powerless people in our society, and the courts are such a powerful institution,” she says.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/BdqiGw0
via IFTTT
Comments
Post a Comment