Reviews
Sarah Kent
This triple bill is of works commissioned for the Royal Ballet: Kenneth MacMillan’s The Rite of Spring was first performed in 1962, Wayne McGregor’s Chroma had its debut in 2006 while this is the world premiere of David Dawson’s first ballet for Covent Garden, The Human Seasons.McGregor’s Chroma (pictured below right) is an oddly pallid affair, given that its name refers to the saturation of pure colour, free from admixtures of white or black. The set by minimalist architect John Pawson is characteristically sparse. Dancers step onto the stage through a rectangular opening; clever lighting Read more ...
Guy Oddy
This year 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of two landmark albums, both of which were composed and recorded by bassist, pianist and all-round jazz colossus, Charles Mingus. Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus is a reimagining of some of Mingus’s tunes from the 1950s in a way that has influenced acclaimed jazz-rock amalgamates such as Get The Blessing. The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, on the other hand, is a spawling, orchestral masterpiece that is often described as Mingus’s greatest work. This autumn, Arnie Somogyi, a double bassist of some repute who's played with the likes of Amy Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Massachusetts-born Bo Burnham first performed in the UK at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe. The then teenage prodigy, who had come to fame as a YouTube sensation, took the festival by storm and was given the Edinburgh Comedy Awards' panel prize. He hasn't performed here again until this year's Fringe, when his second stage show, What, sold out in a matter of minutes and was again garlanded with rave reviews.He's now doing a short tour of What, and it starts with one of the most astonishingly accomplished opening segments I have ever seen, a combination of rap, dance, magic and physical comedy Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Georgians are in our marrow, and two of them in particular. The dawn of the age gave us Handel, who came over from Hanover with George I. Then at the sunset came the ever-exalted Jane Austen, who dedicated Emma in mock deference to the bloated Prince Regent. And in between there are all those elegant terraces in dark-brown brick, desirable survivors of the Industrial Revolution and the Luftwaffe.As this entertaining exhibition argues, the Georgian age is also the crucible to which the British owe much of their identity. It was in the pre-Victorian century that the middle classes, which Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
No preparation is sufficient for hearing the theme to Doctor Who live. It’s obviously going to be on the menu, yet as the familiar “dung-a, dung-a, dung-a” refrain kicks off something deep and unexpected stirs within. The emotional bond with this sound and this melody is so strong it’s akin to being transported to one of the Doctor’s exotic destinations. Recreated on stage, the familiar suddenly becomes thrillingly fresh.What the BBC Radiophonic Workshop created became part of the fabric of British society. They invented the voice of the Daleks. Yet in 1998, under John Birt, the BBC closed it Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Brenda Holloway: The Artistry of Brenda Holloway / Various Artists: ERA Records Northern SoulAs the home of the Motown empire, Detroit dominated American soul music in the Sixties. Yet the label’s boss Berry Gordy bowed to the inevitable and opened a Los Angeles office in November 1963. The West Coast’s home of film was taking over as America’s music business hub. Brenda Holloway was among Motown’s first California signings and spent her time with the label shuttling between LA and Detroit, recording in both cities. ERA Records was Los Angeles born, and competed with Motown on its new turf. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Dvořák: Cello Concertos Steven Isserlis (cello), Mahler Chamber Orchestra/Daniel Harding (Hyperion)How wonderful to hear a familiar work sounding so fresh and potent. Steven Isserlis's Dvořák anthology is revelatory, in so many ways. There's the sumptious orchestral playing from Daniel Harding's Mahler Chamber Orchestra. It's warm, rich, but never overwhelms the solo line, and Dvořák's wind and brass writing has rarely sounded more clean and clear. I'm thinking of the nostalgic horn solo which steals into the B minor concerto's first movement, or the quiet trumpets in the same work's Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Sarah Millican’s career blossomed on the back of a divorce. Her husband upped sticks after seven years of marriage when she was 29. The rage and sorrow catapulted an innately funny office worker into a second career. For her new show, entitled Home Bird, the story has moved on and her subject is buying a home and installing her boyfriend. Only he’s not happy with the arrangements in the garden. The shed, he complains, is not suitable for self-abuse. That, Millican explains, is because it’s a greenhouse.Such is Millican's insouciance about privacy that she may as well be in that greenhouse Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Liam Noble has kept his fans waiting so long for some new music, they were beginning to wonder if he’d turned into David Bowie. The British jazz pianist’s last album of originals, Romance among the Fishes, was released in 2004. Since then he’s recorded the highly regarded Brubeck, which Brubeck himself declared "an inspiration and a challenge for me to carry on”, and collaborated with distinguished players on both sides of the Atlantic. But his fans, while enjoying the live performances, which have built his reputation as one of the great piano improvisers of the contemporary scene, were Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
A single movement is all it takes. A wounded man is held at gunpoint, and instead of cringing away from the inevitable bullet, he lifts his head and looks his would-be executioner in eye. This simple gesture does not just save his life – it sets in motion a drama that will ultimately consume the lives of everyone caught up in it.This pivotal confrontation takes place in the rubble of a village, between black freedom fighter George Jozana and white South African soldiers Papa Louw and Josh Gilmore, during the civil war in Angola. Having decided to keep Jozana alive, the Afrikaans officer Read more ...
David Nice
There’s a scene in Mozart’s most metaphysical opera which Ingmar Bergman, creator of what is still the richest of all Magic Flutes, describes as “at the outermost limit of life”. Hero Tamino seems to have reached a point of no return and no going forward. “When will this darkness end?”, he asks, and voices reply, “Soon, soon or never”.We must believe the extremity in that rite of passage. But not only are the vital choral responses unmysterious and perfunctory in this new ENO production; Complicite director Simon McBurney has it that the page of a giant video-projected picture book has Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
The original Chainsaw Warrior was a single-player boardgame, published in 1987 by tabletop gaming powerhouse Games Workshop - home to the better-known Warhammer 40,000 wargame and endless shelves of lead miniatures and associated acrylic paints. An odd mix of solitaire card game and dice-based RPG, the game cast you as an archetypical Eighties Bad Dude tasked with fighting waves of zombies and mutants to defeat an evil entity known as Darkness at the heart of a ruined New York.Chainsaw Warrior on Android, iOS and PC is the same game. No, I mean it really is EXACTLY the same game. Rather than Read more ...