Reviews
David Nice
Not everyone knew what to expect from this fascinating programme. Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, last of his orchestral masterpieces, is nothing like the more familiar aspects of his piano concertos. Nor is Busoni’s nominal attempt at the form, which seems more of a Symphony-Concerto than anything else, and style-wise impossible to pin down. Both works had the fullest care and focus last night.It felt counter-intuitive to have Rachmaninov's very personal swansong in the first half; if some of us couldn't quite tune in to the depths at first, that was no fault of the performance. Edward Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Brighton’s Preston Park came alive this weekend in the most magnificently colourful, sparkling and diverse celebration of love in all its forms for the UK's most famous LGBTQ+ community fundraiser.Saturday was the more hedonistic affair, seeing the finest (and smallest) costumes, rainbow paint and general indulgence, with all the glamour and glitter to rival a spectacular line up including The House Gospel Choir and disco Queen Sophie Ellis Bextor. American actor and singer Billy Porter showcased some fabulous moves and music, including hit “Children” and debuting “Black Mona Lisa”, a funky Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
A Chorus Line reigned supreme on Broadway from 1975 to 1990, a bold, bare-bones piece that for once put musical theatre’s hoofers in the spotlight. “As welcome as a rainbow after a thunderstorm” was Clive Barnes’s summation in the New York Times.It was there when Aids began to decimate theatre-land, taking its creator, Michael Bennett, in 1987 too. It was a show that acknowledged the flesh and blood performers who went on making the magic happen and lent them added poignancy. And it presumably did so again in 2021, when the Curve Leicester created this production as a one-finger salute to Read more ...
David Kettle
The Mosinee Project, Underbelly Cowgate ★★★★In May 1950, a small US town awoke to hammer-and-sickle flags hanging from lamp-posts, its local newspaper transformed into a Soviet propaganda journal, its citizens’ firearms confiscated and handed to loyal communist troops, and – most alarmingly – its mayor detained under armed guard.It’s a fascinating and little-known byway of US history, and how the Wisconsin community of Mosinee arrived at that elaborate and eyebrow-raising simulation is the subject of the debut Fringe show from new theatre company Counterfactual. And what begins with a Read more ...
David Nice
The buildings, 13th-16th century, are earlier than the music (mostly Baroque). And what buildings. Non-Estonians like myself had heard that Haapsalu was a fine seaside town; but tourist publicity neglected the glory of the castle and cathedral, a central festival venue. If Livonians, Germans, Swedes and Russians all passed through, enriching and destroying, this most perfect of small festivals now welcomes international musicians to perform alongside world-class Estonians.Since musicologist, conductor and Artistic Director Toomas Siitan founded the festival in 1994, making it one of the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Anna Akana, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ If you like morbid humour, you’ve come to the right place. Asian American comic Anna Akana, a YouTube star making her Fringe debut, dives in at the deep end with It Gets Darker, which deals with, inter alia, her sister’s suicide.But before we get there, Akana sets the scene. She has returned to comedy after several years away, having left the scene because she was threatened by a long-term stalker who the LAPD told her they couldn’t arrest until he did something. As awful as it was, she acknowledges that having a stalker is great material for a comic. “My Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Does John Wilson ever stumble?The Sinfonia of London, the Gateshead-born conductor’s ad hoc all-star super-band, rode into a full-to-bursting Royal Albert Hall once again last night with an all-American Proms programme that promised not just crowd-pleasing Stateside favourites (Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in its centenary year, Barber’s Adagio for Strings) but the towering Yosemite peak of John Adams’s massive symphony-in-all-but name, Harmonielehre. There were a couple of moments, especially in a sometimes routine rendering of Copland’s Billy the Kid, when their famously blazing Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Trouble. Overly honest. Too opinionated. Ultimately get killed for refusing to let go of their principles and kowtowing to the status quo. I didn’t ever expect myself to be writing about the similarities between Carmen and Jesus Christ, but then I suppose that presenting the unexpected and inspiring audiences to think about art in new ways is what the Edinburgh International Festival’s meant to do. “Rituals that Unite Us” is this year’s theme, in Festival Director Nicola Benedetti’s second year in the role. Like all good themes it has both depth and breadth. Of course, the art of coming Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jin Hao Li Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Jin Hao Li was born in China, raised in Singapore and studied English at a Scottish university. So it’s perhaps not surprising that, in drawing on so many cultural sources, his brand of comedy should be so singular.Swimming in a Submarine, his debut Fringe show, is a deftly constructed hour in which Li mixes surreal invention, zinging one-liners, callbacks, hokey rap and some rather disconcerting audience interaction.He certainly knows how to make an impression. He comes on stage to loud metal music but then speaks softly – which forms a great Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The music scene on the New Jersey shore in the late Sixties and early Seventies must have been a thing of wonder, a kind of Merseymania-on-Sea. Its mix of soul, R&B and primitive rock’n’roll fuelled countless groups, not least Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and eventually Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Stevie Van Zandt was a key member of both of those outfits.While history has decreed that Springsteen’s vast shadow should eclipse everything, Bill Teck’s documentary (originally made for HBO) does a solid job of reminding us that maybe the Boss did need a little help, and he got Read more ...
Gary Naylor
In the 1960s, Cilla Black was rescued from hat check duties at The Cavern and made a star. In the 1980s, Rick Astley was whisked away from tea-making at the Stock-Aitken-Waterman studios to launch, 30 years later. a billion RickRolls. In the 2020s, Frankie Taylor is spirited away from a Milton Keynes cinema popcorn stand to the bright (and I mean bright) lights of Bollywood. Okay, it’s the least likely of those unlikely routes to stardom, but this is Musical Theatre, a world in which if you just believe hard enough, you too can be the idol of millions, with all the dubious rewards that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Barefoot in Bryophyte is a collaboration between musicians embedded in Norway’s jazz and experimental music scenes. Some of it, though, sounds nothing like what might be expected. Take the fourth track, “Paper Fox.” Figuratively, it lies at the centre of a Venn Diagram bringing together Mazzy Star, 4AD’s 1984 This Mortal Coil album It'll End in Tears and the more minimal aspects of Baltimore’s Beach House. It’s quite something.Then there’s the shoegazing-adjacent “So Low” which does, indeed, bear a familial resemblance to Low were they stripped of their tendency towards embracing noise. The Read more ...