Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can sometimes also be found for £700, a relative bargain in the context of the upper limit of the prices the collector’s market has settled on.There were two follow-up albums – each credited to Andwella. August 1970’s World's End fetches around £40 to £80; People's People, issued in late 1970, attracts prices of £50 to £100. Cult stuff then, with interest centred on that first album. And where there’s such appeal, repressings follow. Love And Poetry was first reissued in 1995 Read more ...
Robert Beale
There’s a sense of cheerful abandon about Manchester Camerata’s Mozart concerts with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy that is hard to resist.So it wasn’t exactly the programme originally advertised, and the concept of performing and recording all Mozart’s piano concertos with all his opera overtures has stretched a bit as time has gone by, but this was the penultimate in a series that began not far off 10 years ago – and they were going to have fun.The concerto element, in strict fact, was Johann Christian Bach as recycled by Mozart: three piano sonatas by the London Bach turned Read more ...
David Nice
It’s what you dream of in opera but don’t often get: singers feeling free and liberated to give their best after weeks of preparation with a master conductor. Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati leads the way with a peerless London Philharmonic Orchestra in Bizet’s absolute masterpiece, and Tunisian-Canadian mezzo Rihab Chaieb’s Carmen stuns in a vocally magnificent cast.Better still if everything else aligns, as it did in Irish National Opera’s recent L’Olimpiade. Not quite so much here, given a production by Tony award winner Diane Paulus which tells the story for the most part – a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like the trash compactor in the first Star Wars film.THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM BITThere is a boycott, by around 25% of booked artists, of Brighton’s annual multi-venue showcase for new and rising bands. This is in protest at sponsor Barclays Bank’s involvement with arms companies trading with Israel as that country instigates the ongoing and catastrophic Gaza bloodbath. The boycott was begun a couple of months ago as a petition by Bristol punk outfit The Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There are many definitions of bravery, and taking on the challenge of embodying John Cleese as Basil Fawlty in Cleese’s own stage adaptation of Fawlty Towers would undoubtedly be one of them. But Adam Jackson-Smith pulls it off with aplomb, deftly nailing Basil’s every acidic aside, outburst of impotent rage or episode of manic terror. Or, indeed, silly walk.Prior to curtain-up, misgivings hovered about what the evening might hold. Could Fawlty Towers survive the transition to the stage without bathos or anti-climax? Could a new cast hold a candle to the much-venerated original team? Would it Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In many ways, Laufey’s emotionally charged, sold-out Royal Albert Hall debut was a masterclass. The Chinese-Icelandic musician, who started writing songs as a cello student while on a scholarship at Berklee School in Boston (2018-2021), inspires the kind of devotion in her fan base which is a phenomenon to behold.If I had imagined that Mariah Carey’s “Lambily” would set a gold – and glitter – standard for smitten fandom, then this is something else: Laufey’s congregation of mainly female young worshippers are visibly and audibly younger and keener. A white ribbon in the hair is de rigueur; Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
What with the likes of Sexy Beast, Layer Cake, The Hatton Garden Job and the oeuvre of Guy Ritchie, the British gangster movie has become its own quaint little genre, a bit like an offshoot of the Ealing comedy with added thuggery, swearing and arcane London patois. Bermondsey Tales: Fall of the Roman Empire is a slightly ramshackle version of the above, evidently made on a tight budget (with the assistance, bizarrely, of Middlesex University) and written, starring and directed by Michael Head.As gangster patriarch George Scuderi (Frank Harper) tells us in a brief prologue to Bermondsey Tales Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The sixteen voices of the Dunedin Consort raided the large store of music inspired by the Song of Songs and the sonnets of Petrarch in a sensual programme at the Wigmore Hall last night. Combining the very old and the very new it offered a range of perspectives on texts that have attracted composers over centuries, and showed off the ensemble as one of the best in the business.I was not entirely convinced by the decision to put (most of) the newer pieces in the first half, and the older in the second. I prefer it when this kind of programme throws up unlikely but revealing juxtapositions. Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
It’s unusual for a play to be revived with its original director and star, let alone a decade after they premiered the piece. But here we are, with Jeremy Herrin again steering Denise Gough through Duncan MacMillan’s thorny, provocative, exhilarating account of addiction, rehab and a kind of redemption.For those who didn’t see the original National Theatre and Headlong production in 2015/16, this is a chance to catch one of the most lauded new plays of recent years, and one of the great performances. Nine years on, the sensational Gough reinhabits her troubled character with conspicuous Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Let’s put our cards firmly on the table here. I am a big fan of Bruce Robinson’s cinematic masterpiece about two out-of-work actors who live in Camden Town in 1969 and escape to the countryside for some rejuvenation, and must have seen it multiple times since it was released onto the big screen 37 years or so ago. Clearly, I’m not the only one, for Withnail and I has since achieved serious cult status – to the extent that it’s something of a surprise that it’s never been the focus of a dodgy Hollywood make-over or even been turned into a rock opera by the likes of Ben Elton.Therefore, it was Read more ...
Veronica Lee
For fans of a certain age the name Jack Docherty will always be associated with a very good run of chat shows on Channel 5; he was also the star of Channel 4's sketch show Absolutely and more recently the Scottish comedy Scot Squad. And now he's on the road with David Bowie & Me – Parallel Lives, a sort of memorial to lost youth but also the life-affirming joy of music.Its title points to a pivotal moment in the performer's career but before he gets to David Bowie, Docherty describes his childhood in Edinburgh when he was obsessed with two things – music and Eleanor, a girl at school. For Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Two women were best friends at school but they haven’t seen each other in years. One is an uptight divorcée, the other a free spirit. They have nothing in common any more but go on holiday to Greece together. A recipe for disaster, or what?Laure Calamy, Olivia Côte (pictured below) and Kristin Scott Thomas star in Call My Agent’s writer-director Marc Fitoussi’s sentimental, not very funny French comedy. The ageless Calamy is full of zest as the irrepressible, intensely irritating Magalie, while Côte, as sensible Blandine, is an effective enough counterfoil – and she does have a refreshingly Read more ...