Reviews
Nick Hasted
“I feel as if I am live reporting from a shipwreck,” Dutch-Jewish journalist Philip Mechanicus wrote en route to his concentration camp murder. Steve McQueen’s four-hour reverie on Amsterdam’s Nazi occupation teases out the scars of that arbitrary, vicious time beneath his adopted home’s placid streets. Filming during 2020’s pandemic, this becomes a time-jumping double-portrait of his adopted home city, though the inexact mirroring often cracks.McQueen’s Dutch wife Bianca Sitgers’ book Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945) led him to visit its addresses and use her text, which Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jessica Fostekew is ageing fast. Actually, she's not, but having recently reached 40 she says that's how she feels. And for an hour she describes to us the signs, from despising litterbugs to gaining a political viewpoint that may not chime with her peers.Even if the comic is concerned about her “accelerated ageing”, Mettle is not a downbeat show, far from it; Fostekew has far too much natural ebullience for that, and she gives a very physical performance as she acts out some passages, not least when she expertly deconstructs one of Lizzo's songs.Mettle follows in the vein of previous shows Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
We began in a forest packed with dangers and delights and ended, also in the Czech lands, with an infectiously joyful country dance. In between, however, came a sombre and spellbinding exposure to the pain and grief of war.Last night at the Royal Festival Hall, Ukrainian guest conductor Oksana Lyniv led the London Philharmonic Orchestra in spirited interpretations of two life-enhancing favourites from a place somewhat to the west of her beleaguered homeland: Janáček’s orchestral suite from his opera The Cunning Little Vixen, and Dvořák’s ebulliently tuneful Symphony No. 8. Yet the piece Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The album opens with “In my Head.” The lead instrument is an electric piano, over which a quavering, clenched voice sings. The closest comparison is Pearls Before Swine’s Tom Rapp, a similarly idiosyncratic singer. As the stately song unfolds, stabbing strings complement interjections from a soul-styled brass section.Melodically, “In my Head” has a resemblance to “Piece of My Heart," which Erma Franklin issued as single in 1967 and Janis Joplin thenceforth made her own. The intimations of soul music point to one aspect of where South Atlantic Blues is coming from, but Scott Fagan’s first Read more ...
David Kettle
There’s been an incident in Edinburgh. Right near the Scottish Parliament. Several dead, many more injured. Among the witnesses were two of the capital’s young football stars, now clearly traumatised by what they’ve seen. Someone shouting about women running the world, inflicting their agenda on powerless men. Something needs to happen – these people should be hunted down, made to pay for what they’ve done.The questions are there right from the startling opening of this slippery new show aiming to dissect Incel culture from a consortium of Scottish theatre companies – Civic Digits, Stellar Read more ...
David Nice
Had it taken place a week later, this concert might have gone under the dubious banner of "Valentine's Day Love Classics". But not of the bitty, Raymond Gubbay variety: Vasily Petrenko was absolute master of three late romantic scores which happened to work well together, and Louise Alder – stepping in for an unwell Jennifer France – showed she could surmount a demanding rarity, and carry it off with flying, smiling, self-deprecating colours.Richard Strauss's six 1918 settings of lyrics by Clemens Brentano ask the near-impossible of a lyric soprano (it would be interesting to know how Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
You don’t expect a couple of septuagenarian contraltos, aided by a spring chicken of a soprano in her fifties, to sing naughty ditties about jacksies and titties. Then again, if you are a Fascinating Aida fan, you do. Thousands of fans turned up for the FAs’ three-night run at the Palladium, greeting the trio with a roar as if they were rock stars entering an arena. They’re much more interesting than most rock musicians: a fearlessly outspoken, deliciously outrageous act whose political stance has become more passionately entrenched over the 40-plus years since FA was formed by Dillie Read more ...
James Saynor
The Iron Claw is the sort of solid, mid-market Hollywood “programmer” that is often said to no longer exist on the big screen, and this family saga set in the world of Texas wrestling certainly has the feel of a museum piece. Many have warmed to it, perhaps for that nostalgic reason. American sports movies tend to do poorly in overseas markets, so it’s a little surprising that this one has the prominent involvement of BBC Film. It tells the true-ish story of Fritz and Doris Von Erich and four of their sons, who entertained the public with their tight-trunked slaprobatics in the 1970s and Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Under the guidance of director Ralph Rugoff, the Hayward Gallery seems hell bent on reducing art to the level of fun for all the family. And as though to prove the point, cretinous captions strip the work of all meaning beyond the banal, while press pictures showcase kids gazing at large sculptures.Their latest exhibition, When Forms Come Alive consists of sculptures by 21 artists, all of whom employ organic rather than geometric forms. “Dynamic, exuberant and playful, the works in this show, take visitors on an adventure into a world of fascinating forms,” says Rugoff.The “adventure” begins Read more ...
Sarah Kent
From its opening shot – of a flock of sheep backlit by the sun’s rays – The Settlers is visually stunning. But the beauty ends there; as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that everything else about this episode in Chile’s history is cruel and ugly.The year is 1901, the location a sheep farm in Tierra del Fuego, a wind-swept island at the southern tip of South America. Don José Menéndez (Alfredo Castro), who owns large swathes of land in Argentina and Chile, is erecting a fence to prevent the indigenous people from killing his livestock.A scream rends the air; the fencing cable has Read more ...
Ed Vulliamy
Antonio Pappano is at a hinge in his illustrious career, as the exciting transfer across London from Covent Garden to the London Symphony Orchestra proceeds, and the word "Emeritus" is added to his title as Music Director of his home-from-home in Rome. A good moment, then, for him to make a statement of commitment to the latter, with a shattering, searing account of probably the most terrifying piece of music ever written: Verdi’s incomparable Messa da Requiem.The evening was dedicated – on the 10th anniversary of this death – to Claudio Abbado’s contribution to Santa Cecilia over 26 seasons Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Detective Chief Inspector Othello leads a quasi-paramilitary team of Metropolitan Police officers investigating gang activity in Docklands. With a chequered past now behind him, he has reformed and has the respect of both the team he leads and his superior officers. But his secret marriage to Commander Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona, unleashes a stream of racist invective from her father, triggering memories of abuse that are never far from the surface. Meanwhile his Detective Sergeant, Iago, lurks in the shadows, plotting revenge for his slight in being overlooked for promotion. Ola Ince’s Read more ...