Reviews
Harry Thorfinn-George
In Late Night With the Devil, light entertainment rubs shoulders with demonic forces on a talk show. It isn't quite the homerun its 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating would suggest, but this Australian indie production punches above its weight with an effective found-footage concept and lived-in 1970s setting. Regrettably, excitement for the movie's long-awaited cinema release has been dampened by controversy over its makers' use of AI-generated images.An opening montage sequence swiftly establishes the premise. Televisions feed footage of the Vietnam War and satanic panic into the homes of Americans Read more ...
David Nice
Was it worth taking a risk on a more humbly presented St John Passion in Dublin after the best St Matthew I’m ever likely to hear (from Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Ensemble in St Patrick’s Cathedral)?The answer, post-performance, is yes: quite apart from the opportunity to hear two of the greatest masterpieces, very different from each other, in the pre-Easter period, the scale of this gave us a larger but not oversize (32-strong) choir, the Dublin Bach Singers, delivering with huge emotional impact, precision and perfect shaping from experienced choral conductor Blánaid Murphy ( Read more ...
Robert Beale
The overture to Rossini’s La scala di seta is a frequent and familiar concert piece – not so the opera itself.It’s a light and frothy one-acter from 1812, just under two hours long including an interval, a farsa in Italian opera terms, and designed and presented with much and opening and closing of doors and comic business in Robert Chevara’s production (design by Jess Curtis).There are just six roles: I saw the “blue” cast of this double-cast show. It calls for talent beyond simple singing ability in every one of those roles, and it seems that with Chevara’s help the RNCM’s performers have Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Who you going to call? Five films into the Ghostbusters franchise, every persuadable survivor from the ’84 original, plus the ad hoc, Paul Rudd-led Spengler clan introduced in the series-reviving Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). The low-key, humane, borderline dull result bears little tonal relation to that bombastic founding film.Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire inevitably ups the ante from the slow-burning Afterlife, with the Spenglers relocated from Oklahoma to the old Ghostbusters’ firehouse base, and an early, careening Manhattan ghost-hunt. Old bureaucratic nemesis Walter Peck (William Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Winston Holness started his own record label in 1969. Missing a finger, he became known by many folks as Niney. Born 7 December 1944, he had lost a thumb in an accident at work. By the point his imprint debuted, he had sung on a Clement “Coxsone” Dodd-produced track and was working as a salesman for other producers, including Clancy Eccles, Bunny “Striker” Lee and Lee “Scratch” Perry.Niney would get on a bike and take records to dances where he tried to get DJs to play them. He was also shadowing Bunny Lee in the recording studio, picking up on how records were produced. He began co-producing Read more ...
Simon Thompson
The annual St Matthew Passion from the Dunedin Consort is one the most reliably beautiful jewels in Edinburgh’s musical year. They do the St John Passion much less frequently; in fact, this is the first time I’ve heard them do it, maybe motivated by its tercentenary this year.Doing both of the passions in the space of a week is pretty much unprecedented, however, both for the performers and for the Edinburgh audience, and experiencing both in seven days not only allowed comparisons but deepened the relationship between these complementary Bach masterpieces.Much of that was down to the work of Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Immaculate marks Sydney Sweeney’s complete takeover of the big screen. This year alone she has brought back the rom-com with Anyone But You, showed off her acting chops in whistle-blower drama Reality, and joined the Marvel universe with Madame Web. Immaculate is her headfirst dive into horror, and it’s a grisly convent story that aims for Rosemary’s Baby meets Suspiria, but sometimes feels like The Nun 2.We first meet Sweeney’s Sister Cecilia as she waits at immigration in Italy. She has travelled from Michigan to join My Lady Sorrows, a convent and hospice in the Italian countryside. Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is one of the most ineffable masterpieces of the 18th century, its poignancy increased by the fact that the 26-year-old composer died shortly after writing it. A medieval meditation about Mary at the foot of the cross, it pitches two voices against a small orchestra, presented in a dramatised production this week by the young historical performance ensemble Figure.The original two voices (mezzo and soprano) became five singers, the music democratically shared between them: the legendary Emma Kirkby and Catherine Carby (pictured below by Kristina Allen) Read more ...
mark.kidel
Benjamin Britten’s last opera Death in Venice (1973), adapted from Thomas Mann’s novella of the same name (1912) and the subject of one of Visconti’s later, most celebrated films, explores homoerotic attraction, the nature of beauty and the inescapable presence of mortality.Britten lay ill, close to death, within sight of the sea, as does the story’s elderly writer Gustav von Aschenbach. The composer was unable to attend the premier in Aldeburgh, in which the title role was sung by his partner the tenor Peter Pears.The tragic story, in which a famous and burnt-out writer seeks solace in the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Brian Friel’s Faith Healer isn’t noted for its laughs, but Rachel O’Riordan has found more than most directors do in this rich, masterly piece from 1979. Her approach pays dividends in all but one respect.No portrayal of the deep melancholy of a blighted soul speaks more eloquently than the one Friel has fashioned for his leading man, “The Fantastic Francis Hardy — Faith Healer — One Night Only”, as the poster proclaims. His ramshackle life drags those who love him around the backwaters of Great Britain, though not of his native Ireland, to which he returns only for family deaths. The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hey Panda is unlike any previous High Llamas album. While the characteristic traces of late Sixties and early Seventies Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks and Steely Dan are here, they have become melded with a sensibility lead-Llama Sean O’Hagan has absorbed from multifaceted US hip hop producer J Dilla – whose approach to rhythm and song structure rewrote standard linear templates.In the promotional material for the first High Llamas album – the title comes from a panda seen on TikTok during the coronavirus pandemic – in eight years, O’Hagan is quoted saying “when I heard J Dilla in the early 2000s Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Poor fox,” says Rose Dugdale. She is standing beside her very rich mama and papa in the grounds of their stately home, her face blooded after the killing of her first fox. She knows this vicious upper-class ritual is wrong. It’s 1951 and she is 10. Hardcore challenges to the British establishment lie ahead.Baltimore, directed by Irish husband-and-wife team Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor (Rose Plays Julie; The Future Tense), is based on real events, though it’s certainly not a biopic (The Heiress and the Heist, a fascinating documentary series about Dugdale, was released last year).Dugdale’s Read more ...