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Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 21 February 2019
There is no doubt that Peter Shaffer's Equus is a modern classic. But does that justify reviving this 1973 hit play in our current social circumstances? And what can it say to us...
Owen Richards
Thursday, 21 February 2019
It’s always interesting to see how presenters make their presence known in documentaries. Louis Theroux hovers on the sidelines like an ethereal presence, Stacey Dooley connects...
Markie Robson-Scott
Thursday, 21 February 2019
An angry little boy, in jail after stabbing someone, stands in a Beirut courtroom and tells the judge that he wants to sue his parents. Why? For giving birth to him when they’re...
David Nice
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Give me some air! Stop screaming at me! Those are not exclamations I'd have anticipated from the prospect of a Vienna Philharmonic Mahler Ninth Symphony, least of all under the...
Matt Wolf
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Just when you think you may have heard (and seen) enough of Donald J Trump to last a lifetime, along comes Anne Washburn's ceaselessly smart and tantalising Shipwreck to focus...
Tim Cornwell
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Breathe in the love and breathe out the bullshit. After the Arcola Theatre's founder and artistic director Mehmet Ergen read Keith? A Comedy, a wild spin on the quasi-ubiquitous (...
Steve O'Rourke
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Did you play videogames back in 2010? If you did, there’s a reasonable chance you played Crackdown 2. Only a reasonable...
Laura De Lisle
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Bodies is the latest in Two's Company's series of what they deem "forgotten masterworks", this one making a less-than-...
Tom Birchenough
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time is an intoxicating cinematic collage-compilation that embraces social history – in...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
It was TV gold-dust. The original seven series of Only Fools and Horses were broadcast on BBC One from 1981-1991, and a...
Miranda Heggie
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
For its first ever performance in this country, the Symphony Orchestra of India - formed in only 2006 - kicked off its UK...
Saskia Baron
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
Time once again to roll out that line about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The creators of All in a Row...
Owen Richards
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
A British boys boarding school in the 1980s. Not the most obvious setting for a romantic comedy, especially one based on the...
Demetrios Matheou
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
When the world is as crazy as it is right now, its political life dominated by dolts and villains, it needs a new kind of...
Veronica Lee
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
David Ireland is a playwright who likes to jolt his audience and Cyprus Avenue, a dark absurdist comedy about an Ulster...
Bernard Hughes
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
The first visual impression of Monday’s Wigmore Hall song recital was of the marked height difference between Irish soprano...
Sebastian Scotney
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
Joshua Redman's Still Dreaming Quartet is a project surrounded by an abundance of facts, context and backstories. Jazz folk...
Mark Kidel
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
John Mayall is not just the dean of British blues fans, but he has done as much for the genre as anyone else around, from...
David Nice
Tuesday, 19 February 2019
Ripeness is sometimes all. 80-year-old Martin Sherman's recent play, receiving its UK premiere at canny Park Theatre, says...
disc of the day
DVD/Blu-ray: Dawson City - Frozen Time
Gold Rush social history seen through revelatory silent cinema documentary
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tv
Sleeping with Extremists: The Far Right, Channel 4 review - insightful but flawed documentary
Alice Levine follows far right activist Jack Sen with mixed results
Traitors, Channel 4 review - Cold War thriller fails to reach room temperature
Battling Stalin's secret infiltration of Whitehall
Baptiste, BBC One review - detective from The Missing gets his own hand-me-down show
Middle-aged policier drama gets off to a slow start
film
Capernaum review - sorrow, pity and shame in the Beirut slums
Reality and fiction collide in Nadine Labaki's powerful exposé of Lebanese street children
DVD/Blu-ray: Dawson City - Frozen Time
Gold Rush social history seen through revelatory silent cinema documentary
Director Toby Macdonald: 'Comedy is something people need at the moment'
Old Boys director talks about adapting Cyrano de Bergerac into a boarding school
new music
Joshua Redman Still Dreaming, Barbican review - world-class quartet
Spell-binding and joyous playing
Lau, Cheese & Grain, Frome review - the dangerous charm of electronica
Folk giants brought down by electronic monster
classical
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Ádám Fischer, Barbican review - ferocious Mahler 9 without inscape
Brutally brilliant playing, but inwardness only came at the end of this performance
Hussain, Symphony Orchestra of India, Dalal, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - new sounds from a new band
Vigorous, fresh playing from India’s only professional symphony orchestra
Tynan, Appl, Burnside, Wigmore Hall review - the music of domesticity explored in song
Wide-ranging duet recital covers the joys and trials of home and family
opera
The Rite of Spring/Gianni Schicchi, Opera North review - unlikely but musically satisfying pairing
Odd-couple double bill of Stravinsky and Puccini with plenty to delight ear and eye
The Magic Flute, Welsh National Opera review - charming to hear, charmless to look at
Mozart's pantomime about Nature and Reason stuck in a box
Brighton Festival 2019 launches with Guest Director Rokia Traoré
The south-coast's arts extravaganza reveals its 2019 line-up
theatre
Equus, Theatre Royal Stratford East review - thrilling physicality
Brilliant revival of the 1970s classic about pagan worship and repressed sexuality
Shipwreck, Almeida Theatre review - Trump-inflected fantasia mixes the polemical and the poetic
Anne Washburn's shape-shifting play won't be confined, nor will the man at its thematic centre
Keith? A Comedy, Arcola Theatre review - Molière mined for Brexit-era laughs
Canny update of a 17th-century classic locates real laughs in today's censorious landscape
dance
The Rite of Spring/Gianni Schicchi, Opera North review - unlikely but musically satisfying pairing
Odd-couple double bill of Stravinsky and Puccini with plenty to delight ear and eye
Brighton Festival 2019 launches with Guest Director Rokia Traoré
The south-coast's arts extravaganza reveals its 2019 line-up
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, London Coliseum review - a solid, go-to production
Traditional stagings don't come much more satisfying than Derek Deane's for ENB
comedy
Sheeps, Soho Theatre review - sketch comedy with a touch of the surreal
Friendship, fake gurus and fun
Brighton Festival 2019 launches with Guest Director Rokia Traoré
The south-coast's arts extravaganza reveals its 2019 line-up
Adam Riches Is The Guy Who..., Drink, Shop & Do review - super-suave Lothario on the prowl
Immersive show examines male-female engagement in the #MeToo era
gaming
Crackdown 3 review - spectacular super-powered action that was great fun many years ago
Nearly a decade has passed since the last incarnation but little has changed in this stagnant shooter
Battlefield V review - WWII on an epic scale
The veteran series returns for another ambitious tour of duty
Fallout 76 review - how to wreck a perfectly good legacy with one messy game
When home runs go horribly wrong
visual arts
Don McCullin, Tate Britain review - beastliness made beautiful
The darkest, most compelling exhibition you are ever likely to see
Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory review, Tate Modern - plenty but empty
A major retrospective of the French post-impressionist is huge, but unilluminating
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, Victoria & Albert Museum - sumptuous
Daring, flair and elegance over 80 years
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