prison
Sifting the Evidence: the Great Train Robbery, 50 Years OnTuesday, 17 December 2013
There’s a wonderful moment in Bruce Reynolds’s autobiography when he describes what became of his mate, a fellow train robber who had fled to Canada but was hunted down by the enigmatic Tommy Butler. Four and a half years after the Great Train... Read more... |
The Scottsboro Boys, Young VicMonday, 28 October 2013
Forever breaking into song and dance, musicals are fun, fun, fun. They are primarily what folks go to for uplifting entertainment, are they not? Actually, many of the best aren't anything like that simplistic. Opening at the Young Vic last night,... Read more... |
The Love Girl and the Innocent, Southwark PlayhouseWednesday, 16 October 2013
Southwark Playhouse's new production of The Love Girl and the Innocent is London’s first in over 30 years, and there’s a reason Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s play rarely reaches the stage: it’s a lumpy mammoth of a script, demanding a cast upwards of 50... Read more... |
Trash Cuisine, Young Vic TheatreThursday, 06 June 2013
There was a sense of nervous anticipation in the Maria, the Young Vic's studio space. Ninety minutes of torture was on the menu, and I'll admit to feeling some trepidation. But this show - and "show" is the right word - turns out to be a revelation... Read more... |
The Prisoners, BBC OneTuesday, 23 April 2013
“The best times I've ever had were in prison,” says Crystal, aged 23, one of the three inmates being followed in The Prisoners (this was originally planned as episode one, but was bounced from the schedules by the death of Baroness Thatcher). On the... Read more... |
DVD: CapturedFriday, 12 April 2013
While it’s impossible to know the effect of Captured on the few who originally saw it, you can be damn sure it packed a punch. It still does. This unforgettable film was made in 1959 for the Army Kinema Corporation to train personnel in resisting... Read more... |
Caesar Must DieTuesday, 26 February 2013
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, set in an Italian prison, performed by criminals? If it sounds like a gimmick, the Taviani brothers’ Caesar Must Die is anything but. Following a popular tradition of freshening up Shakespeare's works with a shift in... Read more... |
Her Majesty's Prison: Aylesbury, ITVTuesday, 19 February 2013
Television is a regular prison visitor. You can’t keep Louis Theroux out of the grimmest Stateside penitentiaries, the drama departments drop in now and then for a stretch inside – most recently in Prisoner’s Wives. And then there’s ITV. A couple of... Read more... |
American Justice, Arts TheatreWednesday, 16 January 2013
For all its ruminative merits, Richard Vergette's drama is not the “searing political thriller” it purports to be. It raises lots of interesting questions, but they get in the way of any deep emotive power.At the work's core is a relationship... Read more... |
King of Devil’s IslandThursday, 28 June 2012
Although tinged throughout with blue, the Norwegian drama King of Devil’s Island is so grim it might as well be grey. Basing it on real events pitches the film as a cautionary tale, but the message is hard to determine. Everything shies away from... Read more... |
Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of LifeMonday, 26 March 2012
Into the Abyss sees celebrated German filmmaker Werner Herzog take a sharp turn away from those marvels of early man he so magnificently captured in the stereoscopic Cave of Forgotten Dreams to the shocking violence of which humanity is also capable... Read more... |
Death Row, Channel 4Friday, 23 March 2012
“A place of human bondage, a place of human suffering,” was how Hank Skinner described the Texas prison where he’s spent the 17 years. On death row, he's convicted of triple murder. The subject of the disquieting first entry in Werner Herzog’s... Read more... |
