Houman Barekat, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

All of Us Atoms by Holly Dawson review - what happens when a writer loses her memory?

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Houman Barekat

Holly Dawson was suffering from seizures and having trouble retaining information and remembering faces. Brain scans revealed a damaged hippocampus and a tumour, probably benign. To improve her memory, doctors asked her to look at strings of numbers, and then reel them off backwards – an exercise she likens to “Cognitive Crufts”. She ruminates on the relationship between language, memory and time: “three gifts, co-dependent, that create and sustain each other”.
In 'Hamlet Hail to the Thief,' Radiohead Riffs on Shakespeare

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Houman Barekat

The band's frontman, Thom Yorke, created a show with the Royal Shakespeare Company that is both admirably ambitious and a little foolish. Radiohead meets the Bard: a mash-up for the ages - and kryptonite for purists, you might think. But a new, dance-infused take on "Hamlet," set to the band's 2003 LP, "Hail to the Thief," which opened in Manchester, England, on Wednesday, is no mere gimmick.
Sunstruck by William Rayfet Hunter review - a Saltburn-style story of identity

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Houman Barekat

The unnamed narrator of William Rayfet Hunter’s debut novel, a mixed-race aspiring musician from Manchester, is plunged into an unfamiliar milieu when his posh university friend, Lily, invites him to spend a summer at her parents’ chateau in the French countryside. There’s an undercurrent of unease – at one point he is mistaken for staff – but the family are welcoming.
Ewan McGregor, Back Onstage, Is the Architect of His Own Folly

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Houman Barekat

"My Master Builder," a new take on the Ibsen classic, reduces a complex play to a tawdry marital melodrama. When a big star appears in a conspicuously undercooked show, what rankles is the apparent cynicism - the conceited presumption that the sheer aura of an individual talent will compensate for any shortcomings.
In 'Krapp's Last Tape,' Gary Oldman Hits Rewind

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Houman Barekat

The star actor returns to the theater where he started almost a half-century ago, with Samuel Beckett's bleak one-man play. For Gary Oldman, it is a homecoming of sorts.
End of Leaving Cert shenanigans on the west coast in JP McHugh’s uplifting and nostalgic debut

1 month ago | independent.ie | Houman Barekat

FictionFun and Games, the debut novel by Galway author JP McHugh, is set on a unnamed island off the west coast of Ireland. It’s summer 2009 and young John Masterson has a lot going on as he anxiously awaits his Leaving Cert results. His parents are separating and his sister is getting hitched; the island’s GAA team, of which he is a member, is participating in regional championships; and he has just begun a fling with Amber, a slightly older colleague at the hotel where he works part-time.
'Manhunt' Is a Case Study in Fragile Masculinity

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Houman Barekat

A new play by Robert Icke about a real-life police chase takes the form of an imagined trial. One of the largest manhunts in British police history took place in northeastern England in summer 2010. The fugitive was Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old bodybuilder and former nightclub bouncer with a history of violence. He had just been released from prison when he shot Samantha Stobbart, his former girlfriend, and her new boyfriend, Chris Brown, in a jealous rage. Stobbart survived, Brown didn't.
Absorbingly repellent: Ed Atkins, at Tate Britain, reviewed

1 month ago | spectator.com.au | Houman Barekat

Ed AtkinsTate Britain, until 25 August In the old days, you’d have to go to a lot of trouble to inhabit another person’s skin. Today you can simply buy a customisable 3D avatar from Turbosquid.com, animate it with your own movements by wearing a sensor-filled motion-capture bodysuit, and presto! Lifelike but eerily soulless, Ed Atkins’s video portraits occupy a strange visual hinterland between computer-game graphics and deepfake realism.
‘Manhunt’ Is a Case Study in Fragile Masculinity

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Houman Barekat

1 day agoThe Fox News host seems to have gender issues when he’s talking about gender issues. Jesse Watters cited research while claiming that a desk job “makes you a woman.” It was a take so dizzy that “The Five” cohost Jeanine Pirro pushed back. (Watch the video below.) The Fox News panelists on Monday were …
Absorbingly repellent: Ed Atkins, at Tate Britain, reviewed

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Houman Barekat

Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments In the old days, you’d have to go to a lot of trouble to inhabit another person’s skin. Today you can simply buy a customisable 3D avatar from Turbosquid.com, animate it with your own movements by wearing a sensor-filled motion-capture bodysuit, and presto! Lifelike but eerily soulless, Ed Atkins’s video portraits occupy a strange visual hinterland between computer-game graphics and deepfake realism. The close-ups...