The Japanese Connection
By Naoko Abe (Chatto & Windus 2019, £ Amazon) Reviewed by Kent Barker I’m not overly fond of flowering cherry trees. I mean, why cultivate something purely for its garish blossom which only lasts a week or so? Better, surely, to…
PREVIEW: World-Class Festival Of Theatre Arrives
Stables Theatre 1st-7th July Hastings Theatre Festival which launches Monday 1 July, brings the talents of national and international performance to The Stables Theatre for the first time ever, cementing Hastings as a destination for powerful, relevant theatre. This programme’s…
Home
TV series-Channel 4 Katy, her son John and her boyfriend Peter have just returned from a disappointing trip abroad. As they arrive back in Dorking, their mutual recriminations are cut short by a surprise discovery among their luggage. During a…
Shadowlands
William Nicholson (Director: Jenny Lloyd-Lyons) The Stables, Hastings Clive Staples Lewis, perhaps best known as C S Lewis the author of the successful Narnia series of children’s books, was also a member of The Inklings, a group of literary enthusiasts…
White Liars and Black Comedy
By Peter Shaffer. Directed by Leigh Shine. The Stables 5th-13th April. Review By Simone Witney White LiarsThere was nothing amateurish about the production of White Liars by Peter Shaffer at the Stables. It’s a one act play with just three…
A Wave Of Dreams
Arts Lab launch Reviewed by Judy Parkinson Imagine a laboratory and you might conjure up white-coated boffins evaporating something chemical over Bunsen burners or squinting into microscopes peering at millions of small particles. The newly opened Arts Lab in Kings…
Jane The Virgin
Netflix (5 seasons)Reviewed by Alan Bolwell The television serial format, telenovela, is the Latino equivalent of soap-opera; with more passion, more drama, doppelgangers, long-lost twin siblings, lovers, rivals, mortal enemies, shootings, comas, amnesia, mysteries… and of course, cliff-hangers. All of…
Dub Generals – Sweet Up The Dance
By Anna Arnone Sound system session. Feel the bass. Step on the beat. Float to the kiss of the tops. Listen to the message. Hastings based sound system Dub Generals has been niceing up the area with a crucial selection…
Soul Food
Andrew Myers checks out music for dining in the Hastings Jazz Organization @ NUR - MillerHutch @Lewes Depot In this era of stadium gigs, multi-millionaire stars and global streaming, it’s easy to forget that for many working musicians, life revolves…
Stairway To Heaven
Simone Witney reviews Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang Dir: Kevin Macdonald (2016) I’m told that the best way to appreciate a foreign country is to live like the inhabitants. So, on a recent trip to the US, I…