Reviews
Ismene Brown
Were the great Diaghilev alive today, surely he’d be working in the imaginative possibilities of electronic technology - this was the opinion given me by the arts panjandrum, the late Sir John Drummond. And given the developments of 3D, who knows? Would it be this manipulation of our perceptions that fascinated him? 3D is certainly everywhere in dance now, though the challenge is to leap the judgment of it as merely a gimmick. I reckon while Wim Wenders’ film Pina 3D achieved that, the version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring by Klaus Obermaier doesn’t.Part of the Southbank Centre’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I thought I was creating metaphysical history by running Creation,” says the label’s Alan McGee in Upside Down. Seconds later the meat-and-potatoes rock of Oasis blasts from the soundtrack. The drug-assisted disconnect between such lofty aspiration and the grounded music of Oasis was never going to be bridged. Even by the man billed as “the president of pop”.Creation Records was destined to go down the tubes at some point, and the success of Oasis hastened that fate (Noel Gallagher of Oasis, pictured below). Luckily, unlike great British failures like Eddie “The Eagle“ Edwards, Creation Read more ...
Jasper Rees
To begin at the end, this was an astonishing creation, a piece of street theatre of transcendental power which no one who was there at the death last night could or will ever forget. Those witnesses included what felt like the whole population of Port Talbot who filled the streets in their many thousands - 5000? Double it and then some - to witness one of their own drag a cross for two gruelling miles from the town centre to a traffic island on the sea shore, there to be crucified, there to achieve a genuine miracle: the resurrection of a condemned town. After this breathtaking act of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As the makers of The Kennedys discovered recently, turning history into TV drama can be like locking yourself in the stocks and inviting all-comers to hurl coconuts at your head. This dramatisation of the 1950s Manchester United team and its traumatic near-destruction in the 1958 Munich air disaster has been duly lambasted by Sandy Busby, the son of former Manchester United manager Matt Busby, and others who were affected by the real-life events.But it never set out to be a documentary (though writer Chris Chibnall seems to have stuck pretty faithfully to the facts), and it's difficult to Read more ...
fisun.guner
Freud’s West Hampstead house is tied up in a cat’s cradle of thick rope. The rope is the same colour as the brick, a deep orange but with a sheeny lustre. It makes the house look not quite real, a Brobdingnagian doll’s house transplanted to this unsuspecting corner of leafy west-London suburbia. It’s an uncanny impression heightened by the pristine condition of its squat, many-windowed façade.Housebound is the name of this punningly titled "intervention" by Alice Anderson, a 35-year-old French-English artist who now lives in London; and the proffered themes of constraint, imprisonment and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
If you’re looking for a surprising and off-the-wall show this school holidays, I’ve no hesitation in hugely recommending Chouf Ouchouf, a brilliantly and theatrically inventive acrobat theatre show performed by the Groupe Acrobatique de Tangier, a troupe of Moroccan acrobats who learned their awesome skills on Tangier Beach. Through the wit and imagination of its Swiss theatre directors, the show manages to retain a lively street smell and yet pull off some deft theatrical effects, blurring the edges between normality and strangeness - one moment you feel you might be walking in a souk, Read more ...
carole.woddis
Puppetry has come a long way in this country. Once considered the domain of children’s theatre only, you’ll now be hard pushed to find a classical production where puppets are not used in some way. For this sea change we have to thank, amongst others, a couple of Canadian geniuses, Ronnie Birkett and Robert Lepage, and - almost single-handedly carrying the torch for puppetry as a grown-up form to be taken seriously in this country - John and Lyndie Wright, founders of the Little Angel Theatre, Islington. With both celebrating their half-centuries this year, Little Angel and the Royal Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The monumental documentary Sweetgrass captures the back-breaking final sheep drives by the herders of the Raisland-Allestad Ranch, Montana, into the vertiginous heights of the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, which lie north of the Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies. These herders’ purpose was to bring the huge flock to pasture on public land, a 19th-century tradition that became economically unviable in the 2000s. Lawrence Allestad and his wife Elaine ended up selling the ranch, which had been in business for 104 years, to a non-rancher in 2004 and their federal grazing rights to an Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright, film-maker and polymath Philip Ridley has had a great couple of years. All over the place, there have been powerful and revealing revivals of his 1990s classics, such as The Fastest Clock in the Universe. His 2000 play, Vincent River, enjoyed an outing in the West End and his 2005 shocker, Mercury Fur, got a new and exciting site-specific production. Now, his first new play in three years, which opened last night, breaks fresh ground and represents an imaginative leap of the gleaming dark of his wild, wild imagination.Like Vincent River, Tender Napalm - the oxymoron is typical of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Today we’ve Easter-themed music from Haydn and a rare chance to hear some delectable Grieg played by an old master. A kitsch Russian classic is given a new slant, and two Italians have serious fun with Gershwin.Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, Concerto in F, Catfish Row, Gewandhausorchester/Riccardo Chailly, with Stefan Bollani, piano (Decca)
No performance of the jazz-band version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is likely to surpass that issued last year by Lincoln Mayorga, but there’s plenty to enjoy here. Several moments have had other critics fuming, notably when pianist Stefan Bollani Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Manon, Manon, the little minx. Here she comes again - for the 223rd time, last night - and like the legendary ladies of her trade, scrubs up fresh and newly captivating, as if she’d only just skipped off the carriage from the convent. MacMillan’s irresistible bad girl and her gullible, innocent lover have become two of the classic roles in all ballet since the 1974 premiere, when reception was far from friendly, and it’s a sign of what a game-changer its choreographer Kenneth MacMillan was that when you go to Manon, what you come out talking about is how well the character drama was spun Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Everybody knows One Thousand and One Nights, even if they don’t know they do. Ever been to the panto to see Aladdin? Watched Sinbad the Sailor on stage, or Sheherazade at the opera or ballet, or perhaps watched one the many film versions of The Thief of Baghdad? Yes to any of those and you’re a fan of possibly one of the greatest series of stories ever told.Richard E Grant, a rather pleasing actor and a thoroughly nice chap, presented this documentary because, he said, he wanted to know why the book he loved as a child still has such a hold on our imagination. Of course any idiot could answer Read more ...