naxmafia.blogg.se

Then, vision restored, you see a face in front of you.

Deprived of sight, you focus intensely on each stimulus.

You are sitting in a wheelchair, blindfolded and pushed into a room where your senses are caressed: fingers run through your hair, a chocolate is popped in your mouth, a voice whispers intimate questions. Even if it eventually flirts with melodrama, Elmina’s Kitchen is a work of surging vitality that takes on board gun control, the battle between books and consumerism, and the maelstrom of life in a Hackney eatery. Kwame Kwei-Armah’s play, which began life at the National before transferring, was one of the first by a black British dramatist to make it to the West End. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian 47 Elmina’s Kitchen (2003) Surging vitality … Kwame Kwei-Armah and Dona Croll in Elmina’s Kitchen at the Garrick, London, in 2005. In the age of Donald Trump, I’ve yet to see another play that quite so incisively captures the myth of the United States and all the ugliness it has bred. Mission Drift’s heady mix of history, mythology and floor-shaking tunes skewered the American dream while recreating the giddy, greedy thrill it promises. 48 Mission Drift (2012)īrilliantly collapsing time and space, the Team’s dissection of US capitalism is one of the most theatrically ambitious shows of recent years. Lee continued to explore themes of prejudice and stereotype in works such as The Shipment and Straight White Men, but this finds her at her most scurrilous and original. (There’s also a very boring white couple.) An exquisitely uncomfortable exploration of bias, it also includes mimed suicides choreographed to Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas. Lee, a Korean-American artist, populated the stage with three women in traditional Korean dress and a fourth woman, Korean-American, who despises them. Wild, scorching and gleefully profane, Young Jean Lee’s early play is an Asian-American identity-politics comedy. 49 Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (2006) And in its pre-Brexit deconstruction of Britain’s relationship with Europe, it feels chillingly prescient. Loathed and loved in equal measure, it has undoubtedly galvanised a new generation of directors inspired by continental European theatre. Simon Stephens’ detective yarn took audiences on a thrilling and disorientating trip across Europe, in a trilingual collaboration with German director Sebastian Nübling and Estonian designer Ene-Liis Semper. Few productions this century have divided opinion like Three Kingdoms.