Reviews
Katherine McLaughlin
There’s so much high drama and scandal surrounding the production of Orson Welles’ feverish cruise through the dark side of human nature it’s no surprise the resulting film is a bizarre labyrinthine of twists and tightly strung lunacy. Welles’s exorcism of personal and professional demons in this impassioned and witty tale of moral bankruptcy remains as compelling and confounding today as it was back in 1948.Already on the fringes of Hollywood, Welles got himself into considerable debt on the making of Around the World in 80 Days, and in a desperate move contacted Henry Cohn, head of Columbia Read more ...
aleks.sierz
While it is something of a cliché to be reminded that forgetting the past is a sure way of repeating it, the problems of the Middle East are so acute that this thought might be worth taking seriously. In Holy Warriors, playwright David Eldridge’s new look at the struggle for Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Middle Ages to the present day, the scope is ambitious and the subject matter as timely as can be. But is the play any good?Subtitled “a fantasia on the Third Crusade and the history of violent struggle in the Holy Lands”, the play is an epic that sweeps all before it. Here is Saladin Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A Grecian palace on a studio lot. Gods wander about among the plywood and polystyrene looking deific. As a child is raised to the heavens a voice(over) is heard to intone the following legend.Oracle: You don’t want to believe those myths you’ve read in boys’ own books about the heroes of ancient times. That Roger Lancelyn Green is so tediously on-message. Take the dozen labours of the demi-god Hercules…Young mother of Hercules (from the pages of Playboy): Wait up while I flash a 3D breast at everyone's goggles, but just once or we'll never get our PG rating. Now let’s get on with the retarded Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
If last year’s Ring cycle triumphantly proved that world-class opera can be done at the Albert Hall, this Rosenkavalier suggests that the less epic end of the repertoire isn’t such a sure thing. That is not to say that this performance was dud, far from it; rather that its few problems were venue related. Balance was the main issue, though Robin Ticciati did a great job of whipping the London Philharmonic Orchestra into a passionate frenzy in the Prelude and then taking things down a notch and keeping them there to avoid engulfing the voices. The audience will have had a different experience Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The Purge is the night each year when the US government turns off the law and lets mayhem rule, allowing crimes including murder and rape. Just let it all out of your system, citizens, goes the official logic, and crime on the other 364 days will plummet.Writer-director James DeMonaco’s concept in the original, box office-topping The Purge limited the action to a home invasion in the suburbs, and promised all sorts of illicit nastiness. But as this expansive sequel proves, he’s more interested in the social implications of the people becoming their own bread and circus. With the New Founding Read more ...
Heather Neill
We know how the story ends, but then so did Euripides' first audience in Athens in 431 BC. Medea was already a familiar character of myth, a sorceress whose ungovernable passion for Jason led her to commit horrible murders when he abandoned her for another woman. Now, as in the Golden Age of Greek drama, the chief interest is in the way the tale is told. And the National Theatre has assembled quite a team for the purpose.Ben Power, writer of this version, and Carrie Cracknell, director, have both dealt with the classics in innovative ways before. Power's A Tender Thing retold Romeo and Juliet Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The Imperial War Museum is one of the most extraordinary museums in the world. Its contents and presentation triumph over the three words of its title, each usually causing dread rather than enthusiasm: imperial (discredited unless to do with Roman history); war (just horrible, and we shouldn’t do it); and museum (well, isn’t that mausoleum?) In fact, its collections embrace the modern world, and are perhaps the most insightful and visible tour of modern history that we have. The IWM was founded by the government in 1917 to tell and show us descriptions – through archives, diaries, Read more ...
Heidi Goldsmith
If the 15-word limit of a succinct listings blurb ever taught you a lesson let it be immediate suspicion of any performer or musician termed "jazzy". This wariness could extend to anything generically suffixed by "y" or "ish", simply because it suggests either pretence or a lack of original or strong identity. And yet if asked what a "jazzy" performance might be a few concrete elements come to mind; well-tuned glissandi, scored solos, precisely-timed appoggiaturas and that old crooner's classic "swing feel".From conductor Nicholas Collon's swift and jovial entrance onto the stage at LSO St Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This was a rare outing by the World Orchestra for Peace, which has performed fewer than 20 concerts since the death of its founder Sir Georg Solti in 1997. UNESCO had designated this BBC Prom as "The 2014 Concert for Peace", the definite article implying a uniqueness which - according to rumour - is because concerts planned for Munich and Aix failed to get beyond the planning stage. It drew a respectable house to the Royal Albert Hall, which looked about three-quarters full.This has been a week in which world peace has seemed like a very distant ideal indeed, in which the news has been Read more ...
emma.simmonds
David Gordon Green is a director who's certainly not afraid to confound. His CV includes indie gems George Washington, All the Real Girls, comedy smash Pineapple Express and medieval misfire Your Highness. His previous feature Prince Avalanche was made in secret and starred Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as mismatched highway workers; it was sensitively shot, unpredictable and determinedly oddball. With Joe Green manages to harness Nicolas Cage's mad energy and channel it into something spectacular - something only a handful of directors have accomplished (David Lynch, Mike Figgis and Werner Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Supposedly, The Mill [*] was Channel 4's highest-rating drama of 2013, and the viewers' reward is this second series. However, the secret of the success of this dour, dimly lit series is hard to fathom. Its attempt to convert the history of working-class protest during the Industrial Revolution into a plausible interplay of character is as teeth-gnashingly literal-minded as it was first time round.Often, writer John Fay hardly seemed to bother with the "drama" part at all, as his screenplay lapsed into indigestible lumps of didacticism. This opening episode was a sustained campaign against Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
No man is a prophet in his own land – except possibly the Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski. In the UK he shot to fame upon winning the London International Piano Competition in 2001 and at home he has become a national hero, his efforts rebooting the country’s classical music scene and inspiring the building of a new full-scale concert hall in Skopje – even though he is still a mere 35. He is also celebrated there as a popular songwriter. That, though, is a strand he left outside the Wigmore Hall, offering a programme that contained as much dark introspection as it did extroversion.Putting Read more ...