The Engine

COLD WAR MODERN, VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON, LONDON  The Cold War Modern exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum is an attempt to reconcile versions of modernity represented by both sides in the Cold War. The exhibition includes a detailed Cold War chronology beginning after 1945 and then the thaw in East\West relations after the death of Stalin and Kruschev's famous speech denouncing Stalin (and his crimes of the 1920s and 1930s, including the famine in the Ukraine that was probably manipulated for political ends, the show trials and the era of the purges). There was some mention of the pre-1939 era, a prelude to the Cold War, but the chronological division also echoed the ideology of the exhibition which focused on how detonated and defused all the various legacies of the Cold War had become. Later versions of Communism in Eastern Europe, particularly in Yugoslavia, harked back to the 1917 era as a Golden Age which could be somehow recaptured only if...

Liberty by Glyn Maxwell, dir Guy Retallack at The Globe Theatre, London So just time for my yearly visit to The Globe Theatre, London. The Globe Theatre is more a museum than a theatre and all the events staged there have a self-consciously staged or 'theatrical' feel. I wouldn't describe this is real theatre but something between tourism and a museum visit. One spends at least 50% of ones time soaking up the atmosphere, the ambience and that's great of course. Therefore Glyn Maxwell's play 'Liberty' has certain limitations imposed by the self-consciousness of The Globe Theatre project, ie this is a really ancient and very beautiful theatre and part of history ITSELF. Its unsurprising then that The Globe Theatre chooses historical subjects to supplement its Shakespearian efforts. 'Liberty' deals with the French Revolution, the politics and ideological struggles rather than the actual events or personalities. Because of that it has a strongly abstract...