Jon Gower It’s not often you imagine people having to buckle up before reading a bunch of short stories but with this one you need something to hold you onto or into your seat: this is Formula 1 prose that goes at one hell of a lick. There’s a whole […]
Dylan Wyn Williams On a cold dark October eve, armed with a cuppa and feet up, I was ready for a rare creature on the box. A Wales-set drama shown across the UK. No, not the one with Eve Myles and the irritating soundtrack. Rather, an emotionally charged four-parter […]
Jon Gower Two words, painted white against a red background, seem on the face of it a simple graffito. ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn.’ They exhort us to remember Tryweryn and the drowning of the farming community of Capel Celyn in the 1960s to supply water to Liverpool Corporation. But as this book […]
Emily Garside Hela by Mari Izzard rounds off The Violence Series at The Other Room. A series of three plays, interconnected thematically and all existing in the same ‘world’. A gripping thriller of a piece, Hela is a ‘locked room drama’ in which the bigger picture issues we saw in […]
Jon Gower A loyal try scorer for Bridgend, grounding the ball almost 300 times in his playing career for the club, this autobiography of Welsh rugby’s first black icon helps explain that ready gift. The natural speed quickly manifested in childhood, where he had to race his seven sisters to […]
Chris Paul For those uninitiated a quick explanation. Amanda Palmer, previously of the respectable punk duo Dresden Dolls, is an American singer-songwriter. She is almost as famous for being an independent artist as she is for her music. This is because she liberated herself from the pernicious clasp of […]
Yes, we all know that ghosts don’t exist, but it’s one thing to believe that and another not to walk slightly faster through the graveyard when you’re alone after dark… Halloween may have become a tacky American import, but it’s spooky foundations are believed to be in the pagan Celtic […]
Mark Rees Nothing quite encapsulates the spirit of Halloween like the flickering face of a finely-carved jack-o’-lantern. Much like the pumpkin into which it is sculpted, the glowing eyes and grinning grimace have been well and truly hacked into the holiday itself, thanks in large part to its association with […]
Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film at Bangor University The film Solomon & Gaenor celebrates its twentieth birthday this year. It is a rare creature – a Jewish film set in Wales. Two versions were shot – one in Welsh and one in English and thus Welsh, English, Hebrew and […]
Emily Garside In a push for theatres to (rightly) support new writing, we’re often in danger of overlooking the ‘classics’. And while there is a balance to be struck, the Sherman’s new production of Hedda Gabbler makes a good case for strong classical repertoire in a season. There is, […]
