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Helen Hawkins
Friday, 18 October 2024
John Webster’s sour, bloody tale of brotherly greed and vice has been updated by the playwright Zinnie Harris, who also directs her own text at the Trafalgar. The title has a...
Adam Sweeting
Friday, 18 October 2024
QueerWilliam Burroughs’ eponymous novel was nearly filmed by Steve Buscemi in 2011, but it has finally reached the screen under the helmsmanship of Luca Guadagnino. It bombards...
Sebastian Scotney
Friday, 18 October 2024
Christian Gerhaher, the most compelling and complete interpreter of German Lieder of our time, makes no secret of the fact that – unlike his devotion to, say, Schumann – his...
Helen Hawkins
Friday, 18 October 2024
An incendiary play has opened at the Marylebone, the adventurous venue just off Baker Street. Bigger houses were apparently unwilling to stage it, fearing anti-Israeli protests....
Gary Naylor
Friday, 18 October 2024
Straddling the USA Presidential elections, Simple8’s run of Land of the Free could not be better timed, teaching us an old lesson that wants continual learning - the more things...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 18 October 2024
Grandiloquent indie-synth-pop outfit Bastille have been around for over a decade. Three of their four albums have been chart-toppers (the other one still made Top 5 and went Gold...
Demetrios Matheou
Thursday, 17 October 2024
How many times does a politician survive wave after wave of attack from rivals, surf the waves of fickle voters and tiptoe...
Helen Hawkins
Thursday, 17 October 2024
For his latest pick’n’mix sortie into the world of the women’s picture, François Ozon has gone back to the 1930s and a...
Gary Naylor
Thursday, 17 October 2024
There’s a moment in writer/co-director, Jonathan Brown’s, gritty new play, Knife on the Table, that justifies its run almost...
Markie Robson-Scott
Thursday, 17 October 2024
“I knew he was risky, but like fuck it, everyone’s risky.” A young woman (Kelley Jakle) poses for pictures on a deserted...
Kieron Tyler
Thursday, 17 October 2024
Just before the five-minute point, a Mellotron’s distinctive string sound is heard. Three minutes earlier, a guitar evokes...
Alexandra Coghlan
Wednesday, 16 October 2024
A programme of less-loved siblings – Shostakovich’s gnarly Second Cello Concerto and Rachmaninov’s “not-the-Second” Symphony...
Hugh Barnes
Wednesday, 16 October 2024
Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which set out in 1914 only to be marooned until August 1916,...
Rachel Halliburton
Wednesday, 16 October 2024
It’s not often that a classical music concert offers to take you beyond the stratosphere and back, but this intriguing...
Joe Muggs
Wednesday, 16 October 2024
Londoner Ayman Rostom has been around the block and then some. For some 25 years he’s been a hip hop producer as Dr Zygote,...
Thomas H Green
Tuesday, 15 October 2024
VINYL OF THE MONTHHannah Scott Absence of Doubt (Fancourt Music)Sometimes a singer comes along who’s not stylistically my...
Helen Hawkins
Tuesday, 15 October 2024
It seems to be silly season for big-name directors. First, Coppola’s Megalopolis and Steve McQueen’s Blitz: why? Now Alfonso...
Graham Rickson
Tuesday, 15 October 2024
František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová (1966) has been voted the best Czech film ever made, a visionary 13th century epic whose...
Robert Beale
Monday, 14 October 2024
Martin Duncan’s 2008 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains one of the best and funniest things Opera North has...
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tv
Disclaimer, Apple TV+ review - a misfiring revenge saga from Alfonso Cuarón
Odd casting and weak scripting aren't a temptation to keep watching
Ludwig, BBC One review - entertaining spin on the brainy detective formula
David Mitchell is a perfect fit for this super-sleuth
The Hardacres, Channel 5 review - a fishy tale of upward mobility
Will everyday saga of Yorkshire folk strike a popular note?
film
London Film Festival 2024 - Daniel Craig, Amy Adams, Twiggy, Christopher Reeve and some snails
All of cinematic life is here
The Crime Is Mine review - entertaining froth from a crack cast
François Ozon keeps the mood light in a quasi-feminist period piece
Woman of the Hour, Netflix review - gripping drama follows a true-life Seventies serial killer
Anna Kendrick's powerful directorial debut focuses on Rodney Alcala's victims and the ones who got away
new music
Album: Mystery Tiime - Maudlin Tales of Grief and Love
Cold, crisp, bleak reality in a sad set of post-punk sketches
classical
Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford review - an unforgettable recital
The great German baritone in glorious voice at the Oxford International Song Festival
Kanneh-Mason, Sinfonia of London, Wilson, Barbican review - taking the roof off the Barbican
From musical also-rans to main event, culminating in a stunning Rachmaninov symphony
Music from Pole to Pole, Clark, City of London Sinfonia, Smith Square Hall review - talk of clouds, music to match
Inspired evening journeying from the Antarctic to the Arctic through patterns in the air
opera
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opera North review - one of the best and funniest
Perspex and bubblewrap for a Sixties take on Britten's Shakespeare
The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera review - Jamesian ambiguities chillingly preserved
Pity and terror in Ailish Tynan’s anguished Governess and Isabella Bywater’s production
Trouble in Tahiti/A Quiet Place, Linbury Theatre review - top cast plays unhappy families
Mini-masterpiece and splashy sequel carried off with as much conviction as they can take
theatre
The Duchess [of Malfi], Trafalgar Theatre review - actors imprisoned by confused time travelling
Zinnie Harris's modern take robs the play of its tragic potential
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Marylebone Theatre review - explosive play for today
Nathan Englander probes a divide in modern Jewish identity; Patrick Marber directs
Land of the Free, Southwark Playhouse review - John Wilkes Booth portrayed in play that resonates across 160 years
A president shot, as a divided country seeks political solutions
dance
National Ballet of Canada, Sadler's Wells review - see this, and know what dance can do
Yet again, Crystal Pite proves herself a ferocious creative force, alongside fellow Canadian exports James Kudelka and Emma Portner
Nobodaddy, Teaċ Daṁsa, Dublin Theatre Festival review - supernatural song and dance odyssey
Michael Keegan-Dolan’s genius guides us through death, separation and loss
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet review - big, bold and ultimately brash
It may be box-office gold, but Christopher Wheeldon's adaptation fails to find a beating heart down the rabbit hole
comedy
Rose Matafeo, Arcola Theatre review - Starstruck star muses on love
Kiwi comic on dating, phone apps and Taylor Swift
Ellen DeGeneres, Netflix Special review - no mea culpa and few jokes
Former chatshow host’s bizarre take on cancellation
Joe Rogan, Netflix Special review - US podcaster leaves the controversy - and the jokes - at home
Nothing edgy about this hour
Books
Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning review - riding the wave
This slim and stylish new edition can't quite dispel some lurking doubts
Ellen McWilliams: Resting Places - On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution review - finding art in the inarticulable
A violent history finds a home in this impressionistic blend of literary criticism and memoir
Claire Messud: This Strange Eventful History review - home is where the heart was
A brutally honest and epic narrative follows a family doomed to wander the earth
visual arts
Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation, Whitechapel Gallery review - breaking boundaries
Two artists, 50 years apart, invite audience participation
Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Modern review - adolescent angst indefinitely extended
The artist who refused to grow up
Monet and London, Courtauld Gallery review - utterly sublime smog
Never has pollution looked so compellingly beautiful
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