© Ruo-Jia Liang for The New York Times
Assembly George Square studios, Edinburgh
Writer and actor Alaa Shehada turns a simple bus trip from the West Bank into a vivid tale of bureaucracy, humiliation and resistance
It is the simplicity of the task that gives this story heft. Recalling his formative years in the West Bank, actor and writer Alaa Shehada is asked by his mother to go on a bus journey that would take a couple of hours in any other part of the world.
His mission is to deliver a plastic jerry can filled with the family’s home-pressed olive oil to his aunt in Jordan. His obstacle is the 180m crossing point known variously as the Dignity Bridge, the Allenby Bridge and the King Hussein Bridge, depending on your political standpoint.
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© Photograph: PR
© Photograph: PR
© Photograph: PR
A masterclass led by the actor helped set Raymond on a new path. Now the head of a theatre company, he has coaxed his friend back to the stage for a show to encourage young people to fall in love with performing
Darren Raymond doesn’t remember having any significant interest in acting when he was growing up. And when he met Mark Rylance for the first time, on Christmas Eve 2004, he had never heard of the multi-award winning actor. These days, things are very different: Raymond is the artistic director of Intermission Youth, the London-based arts charity and theatre, and is directing his friend Rylance in the lead role of Tartuffe (Remixed), Raymond’s adaptation of the Molière play, which opens at London’s Marylebone theatre this week.
It’s fair to say neither could have anticipated they’d still be in touch this long after their initial meeting. “Unlikely companions” is a tired cliche by this point, but that doesn’t make it any less true to say that on the surface, the two had very little in common. Raymond was a young twentysomething raised on an inner-city housing estate and serving a prison sentence at HMP Brixton. Meanwhile Rylance was twice his age, a successful professional actor, and artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe. Nevertheless that meeting, at a Shakespeare workshop in the prison, turned into a professional connection, which soon evolved into a solid friendship.
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© Photograph: Seamus Ryan
© Photograph: Seamus Ryan
© Photograph: Seamus Ryan
Reform UK denies donor and crypto-billionaire’s global interests in arms and military could present a conflict of interest over its defence spending policy
As he struggles with questions about the millions he has received from the billionaire Christopher Harborne, Nigel Farage has made no secret of his enthusiastic support for the industry that made part of his benefactor’s fortune – cryptocurrency. The Reform UK leader even urged the governor of the Bank of England to drop a crypto policy that may be costly for Harborne.
But another element of Harborne’s business interests could prove still more consequential if it shapes Farage’s positions. There appears to be no precedent for a major UK donor who is so entwined with the military.
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© Composite: Guardian Design/Shutterstock/ South Korean Defence Ministry/AFP/Getty Images/LNP
© Composite: Guardian Design/Shutterstock/ South Korean Defence Ministry/AFP/Getty Images/LNP
© Composite: Guardian Design/Shutterstock/ South Korean Defence Ministry/AFP/Getty Images/LNP
Studio theatre, Edinburgh
Groupwork’s physical theatre show captures the real story of a midwest mystic from the 50s and the followers she drew, in all their eerie ordinariness
In the early 1950s in the American midwest, a woman known by the alias of Marian Keech awoke in the night with the urge to write. But the words that came out weren’t her own: it was the voice of her late father, she was sure. Other voices from the beyond began to use Marian as a conduit, ultimately Jesus Christ himself, which is how Keech came to be at the centre of a doomsday cult of seemingly ordinary citizens convinced the world was about to end, but that they would be rescued by aliens from the planet Clarion.
It is such a good story, one that was captured in a landmark social psychology study at the time as well as the book When Prophecy Fails, that you could argue Scottish theatre company Groupwork don’t have a lot to do. But their treatment of the tale is deceptively simple in a very well-crafted show that does no more and no less than it needs to.
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© Photograph: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
© Photograph: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
© Photograph: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Tories accuse Reform of ‘peddling conspiracy theories’ as row erupts in wake of Conservative leader’s trip to Rome
Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch have spent years trading barbs and fighting for the rightwing vote. But now the party leaders find themselves in a much more bizarre struggle – for the affections of the rightwing Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
The row began on Monday when the Times published an article claiming that during a meeting in Rome, Meloni had advised the Conservative leader against doing a deal with Farage to unite the right. After complaints from Reform – and, reportedly, Meloni’s team – the article was amended to remove that claim.
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© Photograph: Christine Quarmyne/CCHQ
© Photograph: Christine Quarmyne/CCHQ
© Photograph: Christine Quarmyne/CCHQ
Tories accuse Reform of ‘peddling conspiracy theories’ as row erupts in wake of Conservative leader’s trip to Rome
Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch have spent years trading barbs and fighting for the rightwing vote. But now the party leaders find themselves in a much more bizarre struggle – for the affections of the rightwing Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
The row began on Monday when the Times published an article claiming that during a meeting in Rome, Meloni had advised the Conservative leader against doing a deal with Farage to unite the right. After complaints from Reform – and, reportedly, Meloni’s team – the article was amended to remove that claim.
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© Photograph: Christine Quarmyne/CCHQ
© Photograph: Christine Quarmyne/CCHQ
© Photograph: Christine Quarmyne/CCHQ
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