Botticelli in the Fire review – audacious Renaissance romp

Hampstead theatre, London
The painter resembles a drunken YBA in a flawed but timely show that veers from camp humour to political intrigue

‘This is not just a play, it’s an extravaganza,” says the painter Sandro Botticelli, as he swigs from a bottle of wine and addresses the audience. He might be right. Botticelli in the Fire is staged in audacious ways but it feels more like multimedia performance art with a play tucked in-between.

It features Botticelli as a rock’n’roll artist living in politically dangerous times; its mashup of historical fact and fiction revolves around the ideological clashes between liberals, elites and the masses, the latter of whom rise up in 15th-century Florence, first to dismantle the ruling class and then to mobilise in a wave of anti-liberal zealotry that leads to the persecution of “sodomites”.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2JsuBUt