Reviews
edward.seckerson
The problem with programming Charles Ives’s Fourth Symphony - and only the very bold and resourceful and/or the BBC are ever likely to do so - is that it eclipses everything, and I mean everything, in its proximity. And if it was my 90th birthday - as indeed it was on this day for the BBC Singers - I’m not sure I’d want to bask in its aura, especially since the world premiere commissioned for this big birthday - Kevan Volans's The Mountain That Left - had to be postponed due to the indisposition of its soprano soloist, Pumeza Matshikiza. This being the BBC Singers, however - a group for whom Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Awards are strange things; they can recognise real achievement while at the same time overlook the really talented. Annoyingly, Luisa Omielan fell into the second category with her first two full shows - What Would Beyoncé Do? and its equally joyous follow-up, Am I Right Ladies?! - both of which should have been recognised in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards (in 2012 and this year respectively) but weren't.Am I Right Ladies?! is a sort of companion piece to WWBD? but you don't have to have seen Omielan's debut show in order to enjoy or understand what's going on here. It follows in the same vein Read more ...
Florence Hallett
When Rachel Bailey (Suranne Jones) told the promotion board at the beginning of this series: “I’m not a liability, I’m a safe pair of hands”, we knew it would be a matter of sitting back and waiting to see in what manner she would heap disgrace upon herself. It looked like being the quickest denouement ever, when seconds after leaving the interview, Bailey narrowly avoided being overheard telling Janet Scott (Lesley Sharp) that one member of the panel was “about as funny as sewage”.While best friends Scott and Bailey have always enjoyed a chuckle at the expense of their colleagues, this new Read more ...
fisun.guner
So, Exhibit B, the controversial “human zoo” using black actors to re-enact the role of ethnographic exhibits – semi-naked, chained, silenced by metal masks and degraded in metal collars – has been cancelled, due to the presence of protesters. The piece, a series of tableaux vivants recreating the human zoos popular in Europe and America in the 19th and even the first decades of the 20th century, is a work by white South African artist and theatre-maker Brett Bailey, and was being staged by the Barbican. Most recently it had been seen at the Edinburgh Festival, where the reaction Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Currently, the Royal Court is exploring the theme of revolution and resistance. In its studio space it is staging The Wolf from the Door, Rory Mullarkey’s excellent absurdist fantasy of a very English uprising. And now on its main stage is Tim Price’s fictional account of how Anonymous and LulzSec, a collective swarm of hacktivists, took on some of the most powerful capitalists in the world without even leaving their bedrooms. If this was revolution, or even just resistance, it was a very nerdy kind of activism.Teh Internet Is Serious Business starts by introducing Jake and Mustafa, two Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The Pierces were on stage for little more than an hour, singing an enjoyable but quite predictable medley of their last three albums. Their sugar-glazed, glistening sound is filtered through all manner of electronic stabilisation and filtration devices which guarantee harmony and stability through their adrenaline-driven swoops and musical handbrake turns. So in some ways, you’re not getting much new content or musical insight by hearing them live. Yet a packed Shepherd’s Bush Empire, quiet to begin with, thrilled to the intensity of their charisma. There’s a wide variety, stylistically and Read more ...
Matthew Wright
A mental blur of airports, stations and dangly cardboard air freshener, minicab-driving has always seemed vulnerable to cliché. The problem facing Vince McKee, David Morrissey‘s driver protagonist in BBC One’s new three-parter, is that the rest of his life is even more dull. His job as a cabbie, involving copious urine, vomit, and a stiletto heel to the neck before he gets tangled up in a criminal gang, is action-packed by contrast. The problem facing the viewer is that despite a decent performance from Morrissey himself and some low comedy from the villains, the mechanics of plot and Read more ...
Naima Khan
Performed by a cast of ten actor-musicians, Derek Bond's take on Shakespeare's comedy of gender-reversal and the constancy (or not) of love is melodic, quirky and at its absolute best when it loses all sense of seriousness. It takes a while to get there given the Bard's finicky set-up, but Bond delights throughout in the characters' foibles and sense of rebellion and he fearlessly works the audience into the show - which, presumably, is as they like it.Brothers Orlando and Oliver fight over their inheritance while cousins Rosalind and Celia look on. Rosalind and Orlando before long fall for Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Denzel Washington steps into the shoes of avenger Edward Woodward (TV series 1985-89) as a quiet, private man wrestling with his demons as he tries to stifle his natural gifts for violent justice. He’s reluctant to hurt people but, you know, he has skillz. Washington's easy grace and intelligence give this predictable policier manqué almost edible allure.It was Antoine Fuqua who directed Washington to an Oscar in 2001’s Training Day. In the tough world of Hollywood, Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen won a match race between two White-House-in-jeopardy films. So, this vigilante story that’s been Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Like their divisive protagonist, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice could reasonably be accused of valuing style over substance: indelible extravaganza Evita subscribes to the cult of celebrity without truly interrogating it, nor are we given enough dramatised information to make a real judgement about a woman equally lauded and vilified. Bill Kenwright and Bob Tomson don't address these failings so much as largely distract from them in their marvellously fluid revival, aided by Matthew Wright’s mobile set and Bill Deamer’s fiery, flamenco-heavy choreography. This may not be the definitive Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If Molly Dawes (Lacey Turner) had to find one act of heroism with which to fully incorporate herself into her new squadron before the credits rolled, she couldn’t have planned it better: winched aboard a helicopter, her fist in the groin of the one-night stand who had been undermining her since her arrival to stop him bleeding to death, while Paramore - or some fearsome girl-rock on a more acceptable budget - throbbed in the background.And if you think I’m making fun of Our Girl, a new five-parter charting Dawes’s first tour of Afghanistan as an army medic, then you can’t have tuned in to its Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As unavoidable as death and taxes, as inevitable as the rotation of the seasons, Downton Abbey has created the illusion of time-hallowed permanence in a mere four years. It is often asked how long Julian Fellowes can keep up his script-writing heroics (if it was an American show he'd be marshalling a writing team of dozens), but this opener to series five was so playfully deft and thunderously enjoyable that you'd have to conclude that Downton has become Fellowes's personal fountain of youth.The trick is to embrace change while remaining solidly rooted in Downton's dynastic saga. What Read more ...