The Independent: Jubilee Review, Lyric Hammersmith
Jubilee, Lyric, Hammersmith, London, review: In the Lyric Hammersmith’s fine tradition of reanimating controversial classics
Chris Goode’s stage adaptation of Derek Jarman’s 1977 punk classic ‘Jubilee’, recasts Toyah Willcox who played Mad in the film, as Queen Elizabeth I, who time-travels to today
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” says Amyl Nitrate, towards the end of the end of Chris Goode’s raucous, shrewd and free-wheelingly rude re-imagining of Derek Jarman’s cult movie. “In 1977, someone shouting “NO FUTURE” sounded like the most extreme nihilistic punk. Forty years on, it’s a fact. It’s mainstream climate science.” To mark the ruby jubilee of Jubilee (1978), Goode’s stage version — a co-production between his company, the Lyric, Hammersmith and Manchester’s Royal Exchange — does more than pay tribute to the inherent theatricality in Jarman’s apocalyptic vision or recreate the paradoxical ethos of a broken Britain sodden with royalist propaganda during that flag-waving year.
• Continue reading at The Independent. Review by Paul Taylor.
