Posts

Showing posts with the label Kate Valentine

Featured Post

Brief awakenings: White Rose The Musical @MaryleboneTHLDN

Image
A fascinating and daring act of defiance in Nazi Germany by a group of university students in Munich is given a slightly perplexing rock musical treatment in White Rose, the musical. Something seems amiss in this earnest and occasionally tuneful show. It lags more than it inspires, which is surprising given the tragic and compelling history of the real-life characters the show depicts. Given that young people are increasingly likely to vote for far-right parties across Europe, it’s an opportunity to look at a time when they had a different perspective on the future. Perhaps something has been lost in the translation or the larger space of the Marylebone Theatre where it plays.  The White Rose were a group of university students in Munich who sought to undermine the Third Reich through publication of a series of pamphlets urging passive resistance to the Nazi regime. Over a brief period between June 1942 and February 1943, they distributed their pamphlets across campus using ...

Low-calorie stories: Fast @ParkTheatre

Image
The pseudoscience of detox diets and fasting is given some historical context in Fast. Kate Barton's tale of Linda Hazzard, a quack doctor who inadvertently killed many of her patients is given the once over in this brisk adaptation of her life and crimes against science. It's a fascinating tale, but the roundabout way in which the story unfolds seems to undermine the tension, absurdities and horror of the story. It's currently playing at the Park Theatre . The piece centres around two wealthy English sisters travelling in Washington who stumble across Linda Hazzard's book, Fasting For The Cure Of Disease. The book is a curious polemic about how any disease can be treated through a series of fasting to cleanse the body of unspecified toxins. Available to read on the internet , it's like reading one of those self-published books on Amazon that has a curiously high number of five-star reviews. Hazzard was clearly ahead of her time. If she were alive today, she wou...