World War One
Anna Neima: The Utopians review – after horror, six quests for the good lifeTuesday, 15 June 2021
Not long after the Nazis came to power, Eberhard Arnold sent a manifesto to Adolf Hitler. The Protestant preacher urged the dictator to “embrace universal love”. With his wife Emmy, Eberhard had founded a radical, egalitarian Christian community in... Read more... |
The Great Gatsby, Immersive London review – a warm and electric tribute to the bookFriday, 23 October 2020
The Prohibition-era setting of The Great Gatsby brings an appropriately illicit feel to this bold decision to stage an immersive theatre event in the age of Covid. Where, in 1922, champagne was the essential liquid to get any evening going... Read more... |
Birdsong, The Original Theatre Company online review – a gutsy experimentThursday, 02 July 2020
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks’ best-selling First World War novel, has been adapted quite a few times in its twenty-seven years. First came the TV series in 2012, starring Eddie Redmayne and Clémence Poésy; then there was Sir Trevor Nunn’s 2010... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 4: Little-known Lloyd Webber, prize-winning Shakespeare, and starry David MametThursday, 07 May 2020
Has anyone else noticed how fulltime this streaming thing has become? Those who were of a mind to (and who never slept) could find enough cultural output to satisfy 24/7, especially if one adds to the free offerings that crop up by the week... Read more... |
Alex George: The Paris Hours review - captivating yet frustratingSunday, 03 May 2020
A century on, the années folles of Paris between the wars do not cease to excite readers and writers of all varieties. Alex George’s latest novel, The Paris Hours, draws on the myriad charms the interwar period has to offer, condensing them into a... Read more... |
A Russian Youth, MUBI review - First World War setting, contemporary orchestraThursday, 30 April 2020
Alexander Tolotukhin’s debut film places the viewer into a microcosm of the first world war and frames the experience with a peculiar musical device. Spliced between grainy images of trenches, artillery strikes and field hospitals are shots of a... Read more... |
Francesca Wade: Square Haunting - Bloomsbury retoldThursday, 06 February 2020
These days, Bloomsbury rests in a state of elegant somnolence. The ghosts of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell linger on in the shabby gentility of Russell Square and its environs, the bookish institutions that are the bones of the place conferring... Read more... |
Album: Field Music - Making a New WorldSaturday, 11 January 2020
“Only in a Man’s World” is a snappy pop-funk nugget with an Eighties feel. There’s a kinship with Peter Gabriel and “Once in a Lifetime” Talking Heads. Its lyrics though are something else. They begin by asking “Why should a woman feel ashamed?” and... Read more... |
1917 review – immersive, exemplary war filmThursday, 09 January 2020
The greatest war films are those which capture the terrifying physical and psychological ordeal that soldiers face, along with the sheer folly and waste of it all – Paths of Glory, Come and See, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, most... Read more... |
For Services Rendered, Jermyn Street Theatre review – uneven revival of 1930s dramaThursday, 12 September 2019
“I don’t think I have the right to influence her,” says an older character of her daughter in For Services Rendered, W Somerset Maugham’s 1932 anti-war drama. If only all elder statesmen and women felt the same about the youth. Tom Littler’s revival... Read more... |
Tolkien review - biopic charms but never wowsThursday, 02 May 2019
Finnish director Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien follows the same formula of many literary biopics, with a tick-box plot of loves, friendships and hardships that forged the writing career of one the 20th Century’s greatest fantasy writers.We open at the... Read more... |
SS Mendi: Dancing the Death Drill, Isango Ensemble, Linbury Theatre - evocative and essential lyric theatreSaturday, 20 April 2019
While Bach's and Handel's Passions have been driving thousands to contemplate suffering, mortality and grace, this elegy for black lives lost over a century ago also chimes movingly with pre-Easter offerings. First seen in Southampton last year as a... Read more... |
