Hurricane (2000)

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and passed additional civil rights legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• • The tragic hero of Rambert's Bill is a black boxer, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, wrongly jailed for murder in the Sixties. Carter's life inspired Bob Dylan's long, angry song Hurricane and hence Christopher Bruce's Hurricane (a Pantomime), which is a fine solo for the magnetic David Hughes, who commissioned it for his own touring solo show.
• • Hughes sports a boxer's hand bandages and training sweats, but his face has the white make-up of a clown, mocking himself, his accusers and us, too. We watch him whirring his skipping rope in his meagre jail-square of light. The rope is his comfort, his path to fitness, but it also suggests the noose. As usual, Bruce wears his heart on his sleeve and yet argues his emotional case with killer details of movement - the speaking gesture, the telling direction switch.
• • Hughes is superb, his eyes addled with testosterone and insecurity; it's a meaty role that other big Rambert men might rewardingly interpret. Simon Cooper, for one, whose lively, creative engagement with whatever he does made him the bright light of Glenn Wilkinson's stodgy disco-dance Twin Suite 2.
• Smoking gestures