A RELEVANT OPERA OPENS IN LONDON

Poul Ruders' opera The Handmaid's Tale is a terrifying vision of the United States run by fundamentalists

What, in 2000, seemed a shockingly unimaginable introduction to a dystopian vision of an America in the grip of a totalitarian theocracy has gained a potency in the years since that could not have been anticipated. With conflict raging in the Gulf, the 45-year-old British theatre and opera director Phyllida Lloyd feels that Poul Ruders' powerful, moving work – hailed as a triumph by the critics at its unveiling in Copenhagen – feels even more relevant to the modern world than when Atwood's book was first published in 1985 (and shortlisted for the Booker prize).

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"What seems particularly potent is this fundamentalist, Old Testament rhetoric that is coming out of America and has been coming out of it in spades since Bush became president," she says.

This sounds much better than that "Urban Cowboy" musical that just opened in New York. Click here.

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