Thank you Alison. That is a profoundly ethical and challenging analysis. I didn’t realise you had written that three years ago until I hit the comments. That is a real Cassandra moment! Hope you are handling the current strangeness.

Hey Alison. I certainly know that you’re quite at home with obscurity (as opposed to some other critical voices)! In this case I was certainly very pleased that I read the program notes before the show! If I hadn’t read the background about Nico’s experience as a child during the war etc. the obscurity would have been impenetrable! But I did still…[Read more]

Ps I often have a similar reaction to Adena Jacobs’ work – that she’s embarked on a project to forge a new female-centric – or at least ‘aware’ – aesthetic.

Hey Alison. I found the show intriguing. It did seem obscure and deliberately so at times. But then it also got me thinking about how so many of the aesthetic ‘rules’ we apply as audiences come out of hundreds of years of largely male art making. Are we still short of vocabulary when viewing work made by entirely female creators? Or is that irrelevant?

Great review, Carissa! Yes. It will be interesting to see what can top Barbara and the Camp Dogs this year! Such an open-hearted, withering blast of energy and political nous!

Thanks for this, Alison. I was completely mystified by the design. Why the black tiled floor? Why the constantly gliding trucks and objects? The piece seems to be about someone who comes and stays, but nothing stayed put for more than a couple of minutes. I felt sorry for Miriam Margolyes who i thought did pretty well under the circumstances. I…[Read more]

Very interesting and thought-provoking, Alison. I agree with most of your critique of the book but I did feel that there was a reason to do this adaptation now. I was struck by the apocalyptic sense of ‘end of days’ – the trope of an impending pandemic of cancer and environmental disaster, and the escape to a kind of survivalist utopia – and…[Read more]