Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing by Michael Slater
Yale University Press, £25

Modern publishing technology, marketing and production have not been altogether beneficial to the art of biography. An agent will suggest to the writer with a modest biographical work already to his credit: “Well, your biography of Lord Asquith (say) has been rather successful, who do you think you might tackle next? There hasn’t been a biography of Joseph Chamberlain for some years, why don’t you try and come up with some angle on him? See what you can do, and I’ll try and place it…”

Madame Butterfly
New Theatre, Oxford

Opera fans in Oxford are well used to the excellent touring productions offered by the Welsh National Opera. However, there was at least one major surprise in store when the curtain rose on this production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, which tells the story of American naval officer BF Pinkerton’s marriage to and subsequent abandonment of 15-year-old Geisha Cio-Cio-San or “Butterfly”.

Janek Gwizdala’s Research
Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho, London

Bass players as band leaders have a long and distinguished legacy in jazz, encompassing acoustic greats such as Charles Mingus in the 1950s to the dazzling electro-fusion pioneers Stanley Clark and Jaco Pastorious in the 1970s with Return to Forever and Weather Report respectively. Walking basslines have eternally been the pillars of the music’s harmonic structure, so it shouldn’t be surprising that many of the form’s compositional visionaries have had a lower register perspective.

Cuba, Treasured Island – Photographs by Alejandro Gortazar
Opus, Covent Garden, London

Alejandro Gortazar’s large-scale colour photographs of the remote and unspoilt regions of Cuba are suffused with sea and sky. While Cuba has been – and remains – an island of abiding interest to artists, observers and writers, it is usually because of its political, social and economic position as a communist country holding its own against the might of the United States and the encroaching power of capitalism.

The Noughties: Was That It?
BBC 3

Wonderland
BBC 2

Good grief, the “noughties” are nearly over and I was hardly even used to them. This is the time of year when I usually scour the television schedules for “round-up of the year” shows to try to orientate myself and prepare for the ghastliness of the next one. But have you noticed how scarce these TV shows are becoming? No more serious rewinds of the big news stories of the past 12 months on mainstream telly – not even a satirical romp through recent human folly in the style of Clive James. No, these days we have to endure the queasy delights of some kind of “quiz of the year”, usually pitting 15-year-old hairdressers again. Mensa members for the title of current affairs “champion”, presided over by alleged comedian Jimmy Carr. Slipping into an amnesiac coma seems appealing by comparison.

Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine since 1989 by Mark LeVine
Zed Books, £14.99

The conflict between Israel and Palestine remains a live issue, and a priority for Barack Obama’s administration in the wake of the continuing violence in Gaza. Impossible Peace, Mark LeVine’s somewhat pessimistically titled study, is one of a series looking at upheavals in world affairs “since 1989” and the fall of the Berlin Wall but it goes back well beyond that date to trace the origins of the problem.

Harry Brown
Director: Daniel Barber

Cold Souls
Director: Sophie Barthes

9
Director: Shane Acker

An unwelcome revenant is the urban vigilante picture, which has been popping up in our cinemas with increasing regularity since the daddy of the sub-sub-genre, Michael Winner’s Death Wish, cleverly exploited the fears of middle-class, mid-1970s America. It’s no surprise to learn that a Death Wish remake is on Sylvester Stallone’s agenda – he describes the original as “a classic morality tale where you take a civilised man and take away everything that matters to him so he becomes primitive again”.

What Fatima Did…
Hampstead Theatre, London

Shraddha
Soho Theatre, London

This week, two plays about segregated communities: one about Muslims, the other about Romany Gypsies. Both feature a 17-year-old female protagonist. In Atiha Sen Gupta’s What Fatima Did…, the eponymous Asian teenager decides to wear a hijab, thus subverting the expectations of her family and friends. Similarly, when, in Natasha Langridge’s Shraddha, the Romany Pearl falls in love with Joe, a local lad, it’s to the dismay of her family and his.