Reviews
Adam Sweeting
Trailing a string of Grammys and multi-platinum albums, and now a successful actress and purveyor of her own "My Life" perfume for good measure, you wouldn't think R&B legend Blige had much left to prove. However, she evidently sees it differently, and she ripped through this compressed and streamlined Roundhouse set as if lives were at stake.The show was handily timed to help stoke up anticipation for her forthcoming album The London Sessions, due in November and featuring contributions from Disclosure, Emeli Sandé, Sam Smith and more. This is evidently a talismanic project designed to Read more ...
aleks.sierz
In the context of recent events in Iraq and Syria, the spectre of the ill-fated Iraq War of 2003 looms large once more. What better time for a revival of master-playwright David Hare’s story about conflict and personal relationships? As parliament is recalled to debate bombing the Islamic State, The Vertical Hour — which premiered on Broadway in 2006 and was then staged at the Royal Court two years later — opens at the smart Park Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park. But just how relevant is it?Like most of Hare’s work, this is a play in which the personal is in bed with the political. Nadia, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Marvellous reviews itself in its title. The story of Neil Baldwin starring Toby Jones was – and is, because you should catch it while you can on iPlayer – simply marvellous. As a dramatic character Neil Baldwin could be mistaken for unremarkable. He has no hidden depths. Positioned somewhere along the autistic spectrum, he is apparently away with the fairytales, but his grandiose fantasies mostly happened to be true. Though droll without always intending to be, he has an enviable gift for friendship. And his story has something to teach us about civility and good cheer and holding on to Read more ...
Simon Munk
This sprawling post-apocalyptic role-playing game comes long after the original. Wasteland was a critical hit back in 1988. It was a fairly unique proposition then. But that was back in 1988 – which in videogames terms is about the dark ages.In the last 25 years, console manufacturers have risen and fallen, Windows has come into existence (and nearly out of again), and mobile phones have turned from bricks to smart. In the meantime, post-apocalyptic settings for games have become common, so have squad-based role-playing games, so, even, have games with "persistent worlds" (where, when you Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
“You don’t always get what you want in life,” said Angel Olsen to a group of fans haranguing her at the front last night at the Electric Ballroom. She rarely uttered a word between songs but this was a defiant end to the evening. Though her powerful Orbison-like warbling travelled clearly across the smoky stage to the denizens a much needed intimacy was absent over the course of her fourteen-song set. A captivating presence who confidently delivers haunting vocals, she lost the connection with the audience in the final throes, who at first seemed rapt.Brazilian opener, Rodrigo Amarante Read more ...
stephen.walsh
It’s only a few days since I was remarking, à propos the WNO revival, that Carmen usually survives its interpreters. Now WNO’s humble neighbour, Mid Wales Opera, are proving the same point, but in a more positive spirit, by touring a new production by Jonathan Miller, with a vastly reduced orchestra, a cast of fourteen including chorus, and a set (Nicky Shaw) made up of moveable stagings cleverly lit (by Declan Randall), like some highly simplified Chirico. Once again, Bizet comes through, not exactly enhanced, not always idiomatic, but as enjoyable as ever.The unexpected heroes of the show, Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
I Origins is a high-concept sci-fi thriller and romantic drama from American indie director Mike Cahill, who investigates big philosophical and scientific issues by looking for meaning in coincidence. Part produced by Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Pitt, who also stars, this well-intentioned thesis intrigues but falls short due to a laboured script and an inelegant handling of a burgeoning relationship.Molecular biologist, Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), is intent on disproving the existence of God through science. When he teams up with bright spark Karen (Brit Marling) the two make an exciting Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Hector Berlioz knew from early on in life which aspects of death he would want to avoid. He had seen quite enough of the medical textbooks that his father had tried to foist upon him. He had even got as far as smelling the dissecting table as a medical student in Paris, desperately counting the days before he could make his escape into music. The composition commission he received just a few years later in 1837 from the Minister of the Interior was exactly what he wanted and needed him to free himself from those memories, to write a requiem full of grandeur, glory and the sound and the sheen Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The news cycle waits for no man. When Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky’s thinly veiled Boris Johnson satire premiered in Edinburgh at the beginning of August, it seemed remarkably timely, coinciding as it did with BoJo announcing his intention to return to Parliament. Now, it’s at best reactive, and competing with a sea of far more penetrating editorials about the likelihood and reality of everyone’s favourite accident-prone chap actually running the country. Kingmaker is still atop its soapbox, but frantically and fatally jockeying for position.Khan and Salinsky’s central argument, conveyed in a Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Angkor Wat in Cambodia is the biggest religious complex ever built. It is also one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring structures ever created, even now still a working temple with both Buddhist and Hindu connections. It was at the heart not only of a vast medieval city but an empire that dominated southeast Asia for centuries.The first instalment of this two-part documentary revealed how Angkor’s mysterious history, its rise and fall, are being slowly unravelled by academics from Hong Kong, Australia, France, America and Cambodia itself. We were shown a new technology, LiDAR, a kind of Read more ...
David Nice
Comparisons, even on paper, between two season openers from London orchestras could hardly have been more instructive. I didn’t attend Valery Gergiev’s London Symphony Orchestra concert last week, for reasons several times outlined on theartsdesk. But quite apart from the fact that Gergiev and his court pianist Denis Matsuev are active supporters of Putin's “Might is Right” campaign in the Ukraine – a situation which tens of thousands of Muscovites are beginning to challenge – Matsuev is also the worst of barnstormers. Last night, on the other hand, we had mercurial pianist Jean-Efflam Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Hollywood's veneer has been cracked so many times it's possible to see right through to its cynical core; in an age of irreverence and intrusion the stars simply don't glitter as brightly. David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars is a film that forgets all this and sets out its satirical stall anyway. A measure of malice to floor an elephant and a pair of striking performances - from Mia Wasikowska as a deliciously strange fruit and from Julianne Moore, giving us every shade of a star - nearly salvage it.Moore plays fading actress Havana Segrand. Part Baby Jane, part Norma Desmond, part porn star Read more ...