Tina thrills, Palestine probed
River Deep, Mountain High Got To Do With It. And for those who missed Tina Turner throttle in the 1980s, this is a close as you will get to a performance.
Inevitably, the show delivers the gig that all Tina Turns fans want to see. And when Warren belts out Simply The Best, even on this starry opening night, there was a genuine sense of awe for the talent on stage, and the woman in the stalls who inspired this show. Theatre Royal, Stratford East.
ALTHOUGH, AFTER the Holocaust denial scandal, Eddie Izzard replaced Christine Shawcroft on Labour’s National Executive Committee, it’s a fair bet that Mark Thomas remains our most political comedian.
This show — part stand-up, part theatre — tells the madcap story of how Thomas set up a comedy club and workshops in the Palestinian town of Jenin.
It is a tale that the comedian tells with passionate commitment to the Palestinian cause and with gentler contributions from Faisal Abu Alhayjaa and Alaa Shehada whom he first encountered during the project.
Thomas has an almost preternatural ability to avoid the line where support for Palestinians might stray into invective against Israelis.
Granted, the evening feels saturated with a left-wing, one-sided approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Thomas boils down to the words “Israeli” and “occupation”.
But what matters is that there is humanity, not hatred, at the heart of this show.