What Is She Doing Here? is a memoir tracing Kate Clanchy's involvement as ally, employer and confidante of Antigona, a Kosovar refugee in Britain. Told with the colloquial intensity of a friend sharing her secrets over coffee, it has all the urgency of a story that needs to be told, one that gives a voice to the lives behind anti-immigration, anti-Muslim headlines.

Its pages are filled with women, Kosovar and [...]

Ivy League graduates have never had it so hard. Mark is keen to write a definitive PhD thesis on revolutionary Russia, but is distracted by his predilection for internet porn. Sam is determined to produce “the great Zionist novel”, but is hampered by his lack of Hebrew and has to check his email before he can really get started. Keith, the son of Russian immigrants, is haunted by his family’s [...]

Face off?

Polly Stenham's That Face premiered at the Duke of York’s theatre this week, after debuting at the the Royal Court last year. The 21 year old’s portrayal of a middle class family’s meltdown attracted rave reviews, with the Independent’s Paul Taylor remarking that it was a "dazzling debut" and a "richly deserved success". Our own Andrew Billen was more restrained in his praise, however, commenting [...]

Missed opportunities

The UK-US divide between the exposure given to black artists has surfaced in the blogosphere this week. Bonnie Greer noted on Comment is Free that the days when "black people acted, directed and wrote plays" were "gone with the wind". After coming to the UK twenty-two years ago to join a "thriving" and representative theatre scene, she concludes that this has all but disappeared.

David Harewood, [...]

An existential crisis over what it means to be human looms, with the publication of David Levy's book Love and Sex with Robots. Despite the tabloid title, Levy's is a scholarly work, which argues that robotic machines will gradually replace our fellow human beings as companions, both for love and sex. In this week's NS Michael Bywater, finds the robot revolution plausible; "Love is not something to do [...]

Two goliaths of the arts world, David Mamet and David Edgar have drawn their battle lines this week, at a time when both have productions staged in London’s West End. The two Davids have waged their war via essays that stake out their respective political positions.

Edgar’s article in the Guardian this week is a riposte to Mamet’s Village Voice piece, in which he [...]