thu 30/11/2023

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Thomas H Green
Thursday, 30 November 2023
A deathless trend in pop is taking great songs, slowing them down, doing orchestral versions, or rendering them raw acoustic. This, ostensibly, reveals their genius and/or brings...
David Nice
Wednesday, 29 November 2023
This is the show that launched a thousand puns, mostly ancient-Greek-oriented, and just as many corny rhymes, all delivered with high energy and greeted with joyful groans. To say...
Bernard Hughes
Wednesday, 29 November 2023
Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Piano Quartet was astutely described by his student Benjamin Britten as “Brahms tempered with Fauré”, so it made a lot of sense to programme it alongside...
Graham Fuller
Wednesday, 29 November 2023
Some 28 years in gestation, Peter Gabriel’s eighth studio album of wholly original songs – his first since 2002’s Up – will delight his fans and top the charts. Gabriel’s best...
Matt Wolf
Tuesday, 28 November 2023
Familiarity has bred something quite fantastic with the Old Vic Christmas Carol, which is back for a seventh season and merits ringing all available bells - those and a lost love...
Adam Sweeting
Tuesday, 28 November 2023
It was as long ago as January last year that the prolific Williams brothers, Jack and Harry, delivered their absorbing Australian Outback thriller The Tourist. Hitherto, product...
Robert Beale
Tuesday, 28 November 2023
John Storgårds found himself literally facing both ways for the third item on the BBC Philharmonic’s programme on Saturday:...
Mark Kidel
Tuesday, 28 November 2023
The vast and various spaces of Frank Gehry’s monumental Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris suit the needs of the thrilling...
Graham Fuller
Tuesday, 28 November 2023
British anti-war films inspired by “the war that” failed “to end all wars” include Oh! What a Lovely War, The Return of the...
Matt Wolf
Monday, 27 November 2023
The National Theatre these days seems to be going from hit-to-hit, with transfers aplenty and full houses at home. And there...
David Nice
Monday, 27 November 2023
Singular in its variousness, this is a three-act ballet that need some unpicking. No wonder those hooked on first...
Jonathan Geddes
Monday, 27 November 2023
There was a moment towards the end of this exuberant evening when Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson compared the show to a pantomime...
Christopher Lambton
Monday, 27 November 2023
It is not every day that a new choral work by a living composer can confidently be labelled a masterpiece. Yet this is what...
Gary Naylor
Monday, 27 November 2023
In Annus Mirabilis, Philip Larkin wrote,"So life was never better than In nineteen sixty-three (Though just too...
David Nice
Monday, 27 November 2023
Sometimes all the stars align in musical performance. There’s no soprano more alive to the expression of musical joy and...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 27 November 2023
After leaving Midlake while recording their fourth album, Tim Smith said he was pursuing music under the name Harp. That was...
India Lewis
Sunday, 26 November 2023
Coming at the end of a long year’s gigging, This Is The Kit’s performance at the Barbican on Saturday night was an excellent...
Rachel Halliburton
Sunday, 26 November 2023
The Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottír found her work put under a strangely unforgiving lens when it was featured in...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 26 November 2023
"Both of us have always enjoyed listening to dance music, and we wanted to interpret disco in our own way. We wanted to make...
 

★★★★ HARP - ALBION The exquisite comeback of former Midlake mainstay Tim Smith

★★★★ THIS IS THE KIT, BARBICAN A beautifully orchestrated end to a tour

SOFT CELL - NON-STOP EROTIC CABARET Marc Almond & Dave Ball’s landmark 1981 debut

★★★★ AURORA ORCHESTRA, KINGS PLACE Experimental work in an immersive setting

★★★★ LOUISE ALDER & FRIENDS, WIGMORE HALL Levitational joy in all-French programme

★★★ THE WITCHES, NATIONAL THEATRE Fun and lively but where's the heart?

★★★★★ MACMILLAN'S CHRISTMAS ORATORIO, RSNO, MACMILLAN, USHER HALL, EDINBURGH A great composer at the top of his game

★★★ OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR, SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE Satirical wit and righteous anger

disc of the day

Album: Trevor Horn - Echoes: Ancient & Modern

Horn's second album of downtempo cover versions runs the gamut from the bland to the excruciating

tv

Boat Story, BBC One review - once upon a time in Yorkshire

New Williams brothers thriller is violent, far-fetched and extremely watchable

The Crown, Season 6, Netflix review - royal epic in a vain search for authenticity

It looks like news photos coming to life, but the dialogue and concept still jar

film

Blu-ray: King and Country

The class war rears its ugly head on the Western Front in Joseph Losey's bleak classic

The Eternal Daughter review - tricksy ghost story with a poignant emotional core

Tilda Swinton (and her dog) excel in Joanna Hogg's latest

Maestro review - the infinite variety of Leonard Bernstein

The music's well chosen, but Carey Mulligan shines brightest as Bernstein's wife Felicia

new music

Album: Trevor Horn - Echoes: Ancient & Modern

Horn's second album of downtempo cover versions runs the gamut from the bland to the excruciating

Album: Peter Gabriel - I/O

Nearly three decades of reflection have produced a likely classic

CMAT, Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow review - an evening of exuberance

The Dublin singer's tales of a toxic relationship were transformed into a party

opera

Gazzaniga's Don Giovanni, Royal College of Music review - a modest one-acter overloaded

Good young singers get more opportunities than the actual work offers

Jephtha, Royal Opera review - uncomfortable sacrifice oratorio not seismic enough

Sobriety and darkness eclipse Handel's dramatic vividness, despite strong performances

theartsdesk at Wexford Festival Opera - four operas and a recital in one crazy day

Youth takes the comedy award in fringe delights alongside a well-done schlocky rarity

theatre

Odyssey: A Heroic Pantomime, Charles Court Opera, Jermyn Street Theatre review - topsy-turvy Homer
Five heroic women and two instrumentalists go Hellenic, with panache
The Witches, National Theatre review - fun and lively but where's the heart?
Roald Dahl adaptation is busy to a fault but lacks emotion

dance

The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - brave but flawed take on the Divine Comedy returns

Hell and Purgatory get vivid if diffuse music from Thomas Adès, but Heaven is pallid

The Limit, Linbury Theatre review - a dance-theatre romcom that lacks both rom and com

An attempt to amplify a playscript with dance suggests the play should be left to speak for itself

Anemoi / The Cellist, Royal Ballet review - a feast of music in a neat double bill

Rachmaninov and Elgar take the laurels in a brace of prize-winning one-act ballets

comedy

Trevor Noah: Off the Record, O2 review - welcome return to standup for the polyglot motormouth

Back on tour, the former TV host has lost none of his charisma and charm

Books

Anne Michaels: Held review - one story across time

Fragments span the genration gap in this daring family saga of inheritance and trauma

Ishion Hutchinson: School of Instructions review - learning against estrangement

A vivid eulogy for the Jamaican soldiers of the British West Indies Regiment

Jesse Darling: Virgins review - going straight

A Turner Prize-nominee turns their hand to poetry with this visceral first collection

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