It is a wide-known universal rule that art has always reflected its environment. It both models and is modelled by its geographical era, historical period and movement, acting as a “magic mirror” that reflects the truths of its society. As such, Barbican’s “Postwar Modern”’ exhibits artworks spanning from 1945 to 1965 that transport us in the world of post-World War II Britain, giving us an insight into one of the most chaotic periods of British modern history. Angst, fear, loss and hope: the exhibition skilfully brings back to life the spirit of an entire epoch through the expression of its artists.

The project of cramming two decades of art within one exposition is undoubtedly an ambitious one, especially considering the abundance and divergence of ideas, techniques and sentiments of the time. However, the Barbican exhibit manages to guide us through it with perfect organisation, without over-categorising anything and by leaving space for expression for every singular artist. You will find a multitude of different arts, going from painting to sculpture, videos, photography, collages and architecture. Even more varied is the quantity of different themes that are addressed: politics, poverty, the Holocaust, the fascination for robots and the future, gender, sexuality, love, consumerism, etc.

Historically, the postwar period in Britain was punctuated by events such as the Cold War, the crumbling of the British empire, mass migration, the Nuclear Dawn, material destruction and rationing from the War and countless shifting social dynamics. Individuals found themselves struggling with disbelief in authority and loss of meaning. Those who didn’t fall into total nihilism managed to pursue a quest for renewal in a desire to forge a better future, in a surprisingly hopeful vision that I wasn’t expecting to find in such a context. Having received an Italian education in History, I am familiar with a much gloomier vision of postwar, which was a period of extreme poverty and decline for many European countries. I can therefore relate to the admiration of Jewish artist Frank Auerbach who saw London as “a wounded city at the cusp of rebirth”, facing a promising future despite the trauma of war.

Overall, the red thread of the exposition is the shared experience of the artists, although their responses and means of expression are extremely varied. The pilot of war Nigel Henderson recreates his distant and elevated point of view of the war seen from the skies. Eduardo Paolozzi’s dark and twisted artworks express a giant internal void left by the war. Sylvia Sleigh’s representations of her lover Laurence Halloway in cross-gendered clothing defies the boundaries of gender expression. The paintings of the married couple Jean Cooke and John Bratby engage in a domestic war that expresses the suffocations of traditional marriage. Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff and Gustav Metzger use thick layerings of paint to convey their experience as Jewish immigrants fleeing European Nazism in London. Eva Frankfurther and Shirley Baker use photography to show the lives of Londoners from a compassionate and humoristic point of view. If I were to describe everything that marked me, I could go on for pages.

If you didn’t know your history, you definitely will at the end of this exhibition. An experience of discovery for younger generations, of remembrance for older ones, and of appreciation of art and history for everyone. Get your tickets at: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2022/event/postwar-modern-new-art-in-britain-1945-1965.

Photography credit: Barbican gallery

Reviewed by Céline Galletti- Celine is a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Originally from France and Italy, she follows her passion for writing and art by studying Comparative Literature at UCL, London. As an international student living in London, she is determined to fully experience and understand the city’s vibrant arts scene, and be a part of its creative storm.

At the National Gallery’s ‘Virtual Veronese’ exhibition, you gain the best experience from a virtual reality headset of Paolo Veronese’s painting ‘The Consecration of Saint Nicholas’. This was commissioned in 1561 as an altarpiece to hang in San Benedetto al Po, the abbey church of one of the largest and most important Benedictine monasteries in Europe. This is a unique project where visitors are able to see the painting in its original chapel in the church of San Benedetto and explore its beautiful frescos and architectural magnificence as it was.

This experience provides you two guides when exploring the painting – you can choose either Andrea Asola, Veronese’s patron and abbot of San Benedetto al Po, or Dr Rebecca Gill, the curator of Virtual Veronese. The two guides let us explore how the painting would have been seen in its original setting in 1562. With Rebecca as my guide, I experienced Veronese’s painting and the frescoes that decorate the chapel’s walls. The historical figure of Abbot Asola gave me an insight into why he commissioned the altarpiece and the troubles facing his monastery at the time. This method is more appealing than traditional exhibitions as it adds layers of sound and video rather than content only. Virtual Veronese enables us to deeply understand the background, meaning and emotion of the painting.

Virtual Veronese surrounds the viewer within an enclosed virtual space created by an accurate scanned 3D model of the chapel and tells its story using volumetric video actors. When the church bell rings, visitors can walk around the church immersed in the story of art. The digital experience is accompanied by a recording of Gregorian chant, performed by Veneti Cantores. The piece of music is taken from a choral book that was produced at San Benedetto al Po in the 1560s. The music that visitors hear is the same as that performed by the monks nearly 500 years ago. The background score transports us to old times and the original setting through the medium of virtual digitalism. This is a path-breaking project showing how existing art can be combined with new ideas to produce a valuable new experience.

This experience lasts just under eight minutes, and subtitles are available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and traditional Chinese. After the experience, visitors can visit Room 9 in the National Gallery to see the painting on display. This free digital experience can now be booked in twenty-minute ticketed sessions available from the gallery’s website:  https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/virtual-veronese

National Gallery visitors in headsets in the trials for the Virtual Veronese experience; Photo © National Gallery, London

Reviewed by Jiajing Yang. Yang is a MA Documentary-Fiction student at UCL and a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Yang has written several different articles on the WeChat platform and Zhihu website, mostly about film and literature, and she has published a romantic novel based on ancient China. 

As a greenhouse of creativity, the artist’s ‘studio’ has always been regarded as a place veiled in mystery. Uncovering the ‘veil’ as such in various directions beyond our expectations, The Whitechapel Gallery presents its new special exhibition ‘A Century of the Artist’s Studio’ from 24 February to 5 June 2022.

Bringing together works from over 80 artists and collectives from various continents, including Africa, Australasia, South Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, the exhibition features modern icons such as Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele, and Andy Warhol, in addition to contemporary figures such as Walead Beshty, Lisa Brice and Kerry James Marshall.

With 11 sections, this large-scale exhibition highlights various themes such as ‘performing the studio’, ‘the collective studio’, ‘the studio as installation’ and so forth, in order to present a riot of colours reflected in the artist’s studio as a prism. Through the exhibition, the artist’s studio becomes a workplace for genius artists, then transfers into a cage that encloses the mental agony and pain of creation, and even morphs into a stage and an artwork in itself. For example, behind the wall near the entrance which displays photos of Picasso posing in his studio, Nikhil Chopra’s la Perla Negra: Plaza de Armas stands in silence to greet visitors. This studio-like cage or a cage-like studio is made for the 2015 Havana Biennale. In this cage on the Plaza de Armas, Chopra painted what he saw through the bars on public view. Observing unfinished brushstrokes, messy surroundings such as wrinkled fabrics and paint boxes covered in dried paint, visitors are presented with a juxtaposition, or a contrast, between Picasso standing in an imposing manner with his finished masterpieces and an absent artist with only his unfinished paintings locked away in a cage.

The artist’s studio can also become a space to embrace wounds and tears. ‘The collective studio’ section introduces visitors to an arpilleras embroidery work produced by female artists’ workshops that took place illegally behind closed doors during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Domestic craft activities helped the women artists to document the injustices of the regime; some of them even used the very clothes of those who had been imprisoned or ‘disappeared’, as a gesture of mourning, protest and resistance.

The malleable concept of ‘studio’ also leaves physical traces. Several sections in the exhibition, such as ‘the secret life of the studio’, ‘the intimate studio’, and ‘a day in the life of the studio’, give visitors the opportunity to get a closer look at the studio as a physical space. By exploring Darren Almond’s The Remnants(Freud) and its depiction of the enlarged image of fabrics that were used in art creation, or Francis Bacon’s brushes and paint boxes solidified with dried paint, visitors are offered a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes art-making process. In these studio spaces indexed by the mess of making, one can imagine how artists sometimes scatter paints in a passionate manner like Jackson Pollock, or follow personal routines to serve as a creative ‘worker’ rather than an artist as indicated in Lisa Milroy’s A Day in the Studio, or even adhere to mechanic orders to spend and record time by adapting seemingly meaningless acts like Tehching Hsieh in his One Year Performance.

In addition to the artworks, the exhibition provides a series of ‘studio corners’ that recreate the actual environments where great art has been produced, allowing visitors to get a more realistic feel for the studio space. Most importantly, by juxtaposing modern icons with contemporary artists, the exhibition transcends 100 years of time and asks what has changed and what has remained in the concept of ‘studio’, or even ‘art’.

To explore more about the exhibition, please visit: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/a-century-of-the-artists-studio-1920-2020/

Image Credit: Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Painter), 2008, Acrylic on PVC panel in artist’s frame, 73 x 62.9 cm. Collection of Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner London and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo: Steve Briggs. Image From The Whitechapel Gallery

Sun A Han is a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Originally from South Korea, she discovered her passion for art at the age of ten, by encountering Picasso’s masterpiece – “Guernica”. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Art Theory and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins. As a writer, she aspires to write about art that heals the soul, touches the heart, and gives voice to the oppressed.

‘By Hand, On Foot’, a solo exhibition by London-based artist Vlatka Horvat, is now on view at the Peer Gallery. Using a variety of media including sculpture, installation, collage, video, and photography, Horvat has been exploring the theme of ordinary yet imaginatively altered spaces and the experience of bodies within since earlier in her career. A central piece in the exhibition, To See Stars over Mountains (2021), is indicative of her artistic endeavors to date.

Consists of 365 works on paper – one produced for every day of 2021, To See Stars over Mountains represents the artist’s attempt to redraw the physical, social, and environmental boundaries experienced in our everyday lives. In this series, Horvat reinvented insignificant and common places we pass through every day into an otherworldly sphere by adapting techniques such as tearing, cutting, drawing, copy and pasting. “For this project I gave myself this framework: every day on the walk I would take a photo of the landscape, mostly devoid of people, and then at home I’d print it and intervene in the image in various ways, drawing on it, ripping the paper, reorganising the image and so on. There was a sub-rule – related to my work more broadly – that whatever I did to the image had to come from the image”,(1) said Horvat in an interview with artist and curator Will Jennings. This creative process results in an abundance of images with wit and humour: uprooted trees cut partially from the image, hand-drawn orange ladders connecting the park ground and the cloud, and a long straight ‘wound’ of a giant gray cloud being stitched up by continuous lines added in-between. However, the interventions made by Horvat in the image are far from seamless. Instead, they are made deliberately visible and obvious, indicating her underlying intention to invite visitors to reflect on what has actually been altered and what was previously present in the image. “What I was interested in with the work was that it was very much about looking. This idea of looking, repeated looking, and looking over and over again, at the same place.”(2)

The exploration of space and looking extends to Horvat’s 24-minute video work, Until the Last of Our Labours Is Done (2021). With the video, Horvat proceeds to investigate the ways in which objects influence the movement of the body as well as the relationship between the body and the landscape. Rolling different everyday objects continuously on the ground, Horvat raises questions about the physical boundaries of space and the symbolic line drawn between artistic creation and meaningless acts.

In conjunction with the aforementioned works, Horvat also probes further into the idea of boundary in her installation work, What Is on the Ground and What Is in the Sky (2022). Exhibited in another room, a fragile structure made from cheap and common materials such as cardboard and duct tape stretches from the ground to the ceiling. Walking carefully through the installation, the weak ‘columns’ or ‘obstacles’ that appear to support yet erect barriers in the space, visitors are again given a chance to re-examine the limits, boundaries and edges of a given environment.

To learn more about how Vlatka Horvat unfolds space and bodily experience in our everyday lives, please visit: https://www.peeruk.org/vlatka-horvat

Image Credit: Vlatka Horvat, To See Stars over Mountains, (01 March), 2021, Inkjet photo collage, 29.7 x 21 cm, Image from Peer UK

Sun A Han is a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Originally from South Korea, she discovered her passion for art at the age of ten, by encountering Picasso’s masterpiece – “Guernica”. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Art Theory and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins. As a writer, she aspires to write about art that heals the soul, touches the heart, and gives voice to the oppressed.

[1] recessed.space (link) – Feb 2022. “Vlatka Horvat’s collages landscapes. In conversation with Will Jennings.)

[2] recessed.space (link) – Feb 2022. “Vlatka Horvat’s collages landscapes. In conversation with Will Jennings.)

A Tale of two cities is a vibrant adaptation of Dickens’ novel by the dance theatre company Lost Dog. Continuing their work on reinterpreting classics, Ben Duke and his company Lost Dog bring yet another contemporary presentation with A Tale of two cities.  Lucie the central character,  is a film-maker who explores her family history. She tries to shine a light on their mysterious past: her grandfather has been locked in the Bastille for 18 years, and her parents had to escape France at the height of the revolution. We are plunged into the French revolution in 1793 through the story of her family that emigrated to England. Following her, we discover the truth about her family history in France.

Dickens’ 400 plus page novel is brilliantly distilled  into a 90 minutes stage presentation intertwining  multi-discipline artforms where family histories eventually collide. Written with the use of flashbacks to recall the memories of Lucie’s father and mother the story is a complex mix of characters and narratives. Lost Dog did an impressive adaptation of this novel, transforming it into a dynamic play. The set created by Amber Vandenhoack separates the stage into two spaces: a half-ruined farmhouse on which Lucie’s filming is projected and the rest of the stage where the cast performs. The audience easily navigates between the two narratives. A special mention to Will Duke’s projection designs that mix Lucie’s live interviews with pre-recorded footage of different moments of the story projected onto the farmhouse walls.

The theatrical performance is punctuated by some magnificently expressive dance interludes. Along with spoken words when the performers start to move their bodies to express their feelings, the play reveals its beauty. The use of different artistic means of expression transports us through the various narratives and time flies in The Place theatre, consequently bringing the family memories out of the shadows.

Lost Dog will be performing at The Place until March 5th before going on tour. You can get your tickets on this link: https://www.theplace.org.uk/whats-on/collections/lost-dogs-tale-two-cities-tour.

Reviewed by Alix Berthelot–Moritz- Alix is a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Originally from Normandy, France, she follows her passion for journalism and art by studying at the European Political and Social Sciences of UCL, London. As an international student living in London, she is determined to fully experience and discover the entirety of the city’s vibrant arts scene and share the beauty of it through her writing.

Shroud is a play written by Bernard Field and interpreted by the Irish Hawtheatre Company. Field sharply criticises the Catholic Church for its lack of reaction towards the presence of paedophiles in its institution. The subject tackled in this play resonates with recent events that are still prevalent in society today. It is a theme that has been covered by different art forms across different media.  One of the most well-known is Spotlight, directed by Thomas McCarthy who won an Oscar for best movie in 2016.

This time, Bernard Field has written a play focusing on the Church’s hierarchy through the character of a Bishop who tries to cover up offenders by moving them around the country in remote parishes. The stagecraft reproduces the cold atmosphere of the church through its minimalistic set. The play unfolds with a dimly lit prayer scene in front of the altar. In the confines of the Catholic Church, we discover how they protect and cover up the tracks of the abusers.  The play opens with the visit of the superior Bishop Victor to Father Martin who happens to be holding captive a boy beneath the altar. They discuss the situation of Father John, the previous parish priest who abused a boy who later killed himself. He wants to confess his crimes to the congregation and asks the believers of the parish for their forgiveness, but the Church is against it. The story repeats itself and the Bishop forgives both paedophiles and we end up wondering when will this vicious circle end? It’s time that society stands up against such unforgivable crimes and collectively takes a step towards a more safe and secure social environment.

Shroud will run until March 5th 2022 at the Playground Theatre, London. Last chances to get your tickets here: https://theplaygroundtheatre.london/events/shroud/.

Reviewed by Alix Berthelot–Moritz- Alix is a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Originally from Normandy, France, she follows her passion for journalism and art by studying European Political and Social Sciences at UCL, London. As an international student living in London, she is determined to fully experience and discover the entirety of the city’s vibrant arts scene and share the beauty of it through her writing.

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Only two years after the acclaimed long-feature “Pain and Glory”, Almodóvar comes back with “Parallel mothers”, a melodrama full of warmth and imprinted in the filmmaker’s signature style. The film is being welcomed with enthusiasm from both critics and audience, as it screened at the festival of Venice and received two Oscar nominations. It is currently screening at the ICA, a lovely central venue with a small old-style cinema that offers an intimate and immersive cinematic experience.

Forty-year-old Janice (Penelope Cruz) gets pregnant after a love affair with the married archaeologist Arturo (Israel Elejalde). An accidental but desired pregnancy that gets her excited about her upcoming life as a single mum, as her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were before her. At the maternity clinic, she bonds with the terrified Ana (Milena Smit), a 17-year-old who regrets her pregnancy and resents her absent mother, Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón). Little do they know that their lives will soon be tragically intertwined in a dramatic development of death, love, sex, family and secrets. Despite sounding like the plot of a particularly cheesy soap opera, the film is actually full of realism and credibility. The story is character-driven and focuses mostly on the emotions and psychology of the characters, which overshadow even the multiple dramatic plot twists. It focuses on the vulnerability of the characters by showing them through face closeups, in the intimacy of their houses and often engaged in everyday domestic activities. Everyone is extremely fleshed out and given complex background stories and motivations, and you will find yourself sympathising even with Janice’s lies, Arturo’s cheating and Teresa’s rigidity.

The personal story of Janice and Ana runs parallel to Janice’s and Arturo’s adventure to find the corpses of ten men that were killed during the Spanish civil war and never returned to their families, one of whom was Janice’s grandfather. This ties to the central themes of the movie about the importance of the past and how the truth always prevails, both in the cases of historical truth and family secrets. However, the real heart of the story is family: Janice wants justice for her family, Ana is fleeing her dysfunctional parents and everything centres around the two women’s maternity. The solution of everything seems to lay in the importance of new-found families, as the story ends with the main characters deciding to fund a united and picturesque new group.

Cruz gives an extremely heart-felt performance and manages to portray a woman who is strong yet sensitive, maternal yet conflicted, resulting in a very multi-faceted character and a compelling protagonist. This marks her eighth film with Almodóvar, proving once again that their duo works to perfection and won her a 2022 Oscar nomination for best actress. Milena Smit portrays a very believable teenager full of angst and vulnerability with a crippling fear of abandonment, who desperately and passionately holds on to Janis like a lifesaver. Apart from Arturo, the cast is almost entirely feminine, as even the most minor characters in the background are usually female, be it a waitress, Janice’s nanny or Arturo’s archaeologist team members. The men of the film are consciously omitted from the story, being reduced to faceless voices on the phone or voiceless faces on pictures.

The colourful style, the beautiful house interiors and the creative editing are all that you would typically find in an Almodóvar movie. It is a perfect introduction to his universe for those who have never seen his films, and a great continuation for the others, even more vibrant and joyful than his previous works.

Get your tickets at ICA before the 3rd March at https://www.ica.art/films/parallel-mothers.

Reviewed by Céline Galletti- Celine is a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Originally from France and Italy, she follows her passion for writing and art by studying Comparative Literature at UCL, London. As an international student living in London, she is determined to fully experience and understand the city’s vibrant arts scene, and be a part of its creative storm.

Reviewed by Jiajing Yang. Yang is a MA Documentary-Fiction student at UCL and a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Yang has written several different articles on the WeChat platform and Zhihu website, mostly about film and literature, and she has published a romantic novel based on ancient China. 

Writer Sian Carter’s debut play Running With Lions is a refreshing and touching story to see being told on the big stage. We follow an inter-generational  British Caribbean family trudge through the harmful stigmas that surround mental health, grief and traumas within the Caribbean communities. There is hopefulness in their future too and we see the family able to openly talk about struggle rather than suffering in silence. The play has a slow burner place, with long scenes and dialogue between characters allowing the audience to understand the intricacies and complexities of their lives, personalities, relationships and traumas. The soft lighting that is present for most of the play creates a mellow, atmospheric tone against the simple set of a revolving block of stairs perched on stage, these stairs transport us to the family home, the hospital, and the church among other locations.

After a flashback in which siblings, Gloria (Velile Tshabalala) and Josh (Nickcolia King-N’da) congratulate each other on new beginnings, Gloria moving out to start a family and Josh earning a spot to display his art at a famous gallery,  we are spun into the present day. Josh is no longer there and Gloria now has a teenage daughter, Imani (Ruby Barker). It’s a big day, Imani is getting ready for her last day of secondary school, her grandmother, Shirley (Suzette Llewellyn)  is rushing around making sure everything is prepared for a welcome home party for Gloria, who has been in the psychiatric ward after a bipolar episode and her grandfather Maxwell (Wil Johnson)  is getting ready to pick up Gloria from the hospital.  The cracks in the family’s relationship begin to show once Gloria returns home. She is dumbfounded by the missing framed images of her late brother that were once hung all around the living room and frustrated that all her mother seems to care about is throwing a perfect party for all the family, friends and church guests who are unbeknownst to the truth of where Gloria has been, her mother telling them she’s been on holiday. The tensions between mother and daughter are a focal point of the play. Shirley is desperate to uphold an image of pristine perfection to those around her, shielding herself in a tough shell so she does not crack. She disregards the existence of her late son in order to not have to grieve or feel any type of emotion that would shatter the polished window of perfection she hides behind, as well as disregard Gloria’s bipolar disorder. She tells her to not tell people about it especially at church, treating Gloria as if she is often just being dramatic and making her feel guilty for absent periods in Imani’s life. Gloria yearns for the family to be open and honest with the struggles that surround them; celebrating and honouring Josh rather than pretending he was never there, not caring so much about what the church would think if they knew she had bipolar and supporting her and her mental health rather than treating her as if she is a burden. Imani wants to be able to be independent and make decisions for herself rather than have her mother attempt to control her life in an attempt to make up for the lost time. Their constant conflict presents the conflict in mindsets between generations, highlighting that the older generation can often learn from their younger counterparts.

The play is not without laughs and light-hearted banter. The relationship between Maxwell and Shirley is endearing at points, as Maxwell puts his old records on and dances around the living room with Shirley in his arms or as they reminisce over Maxwell as a smooth-talking young man trying to win Shirley and he insists he hasn’t lost his charm. There are many light-hearted and heartbreaking scenes that highlight the character of Maxwell that are some of the best parts of the play.

Running with Lions touches on your emotions in every way possible, immense joy, sadness, anger, hurt, frustration, and it teaches us that embracing these emotions in all their fullness is better than bottling it all up. In the final scene of the play, as the family prances around to the sounds of The Temptations on the record player there is a sense of warmth and hope.

Running with Lions is playing at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre until March 12. Book here: https://lyric.co.uk/shows/running-with-lions/ 

Suzette Llewellyn and Will Johnson in Running with Lions / Jahvin Morgan Photography

Reviewed by Lian Lakhope. Lian is a MA Global Media and Communications student at SOAS and a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. Lian has written for a number of different publications, mostly about music, culture and film and she is enthusiastic about expressing her passion for creating art and media.

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Adapted from Kahlil Gibran’s biographical novel, Broken Wings is a musical set in 1920s Beirut. The story of two star-crossed lovers, Gibran and Selma, is narrated through enchanting music and romantic poetry.

Gibran returns to Lebanon, after studying in the USA, in search of his identity. Shortly after his return, Gibran meets Selma, and they instantly fall in love. However, things are not as simple as Gibran anticipates.

As the story unfolds, we begin to learn of the obstacles that stand between him and Selma. Gibran’s western ideas of love, which he expresses through his beautiful poetry, are not fulfilled, as Selma’s destiny is written elsewhere. Echoing Romeo & Juliet, Selma must marry Mansour to please her father and maintain his honour. The base of this story is one that feels familiar, yet the added layers of poetry and culture make it feel new.

A story of forbidden love – exploring themes of gender inequality, immigration and identity, Broken Wings is resonant with issues that still exist in society a whole century later.

Playing at Charing Cross Theatre, this warm, intimate set captures the charm of the Middle East. Songs of love and passion vibrate through this theatre; the strong vocals of the cast add to the powerful language used in the songs. For me, the performance by Gibran and Selma when they met for the very first time, is one that stood out to me. The connection and chemistry between the two lovers were performed brilliantly! This is what made the tragic ending even more emotional and captured the audience’s hearts.

Lucca Chadwick-Patel / Danny Kaan Photography.

Broken Wings is playing at the Charing Cross Theatre until 26 March 2022 – Get your tickets here: https://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/theatre/broken-wings

Reviewed by Ridha Sheikh – Ridha is a volunteer writer for Abundant Art. She is a recent History and Politics graduate from Queen Mary – University of London. Ridha is excited to explore and share her strong passion for London’s art scene.