Reviews
alexandra.coghlan
A highlight of the London Handel Festival’s annual season is the opera, generally chosen from one of the dustier, more spidery corners of the composer’s repertoire. What a surprise then to see Rodelinda taking its turn this year. An undisputed classic, it’s also the opera that played perhaps the biggest part in reviving Handel’s fortunes on the stage in the 20th century. With aria after aria of generous and dramatic vocal writing and plenty of crowd-pleasing numbers, it’s also a natural showcase for the young singers of the Royal College of Music – perhaps the only ones having more fun Read more ...
graeme.thomson
As it turned out, Irving Berlin's jauntily fatalistic Let’s Face the Music and Dance proved the perfect theme tune for BBC Four's new six-part comedy series. A mock documentary following the people responsible for delivering a successful 2012 London Olympics, the basic premise of Twenty Twelve was simple: give practically any loose coalition of personalities £9 billion to organise an event of global significance and they will almost certainly turn into gibbering idiots. If, indeed, they aren't already.Written by John Morton, the pen behind the fondly recalled People Like Us, Twenty Twelve was Read more ...
judith.flanders
What ever happened to Ida Kar? If the question is not quite on the level of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, perhaps the answer is more interesting, if less melodramatic. Ida Kar - born Ida Karamian in Russia of Armenian parents, resident of Cairo, Alexandria, Paris and Soho, the first photographer to be given a retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in its heyday under that curator of genius Bryan Robertson – is now, all too often, known as “Ida Who?” even by those who should know better. So, What Did Happen to Ida Kar?The answer, sadly, is one that all too frequently occurs: not herself Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Tender, funny and overwhelmingly moving, Trevor Nunn’s revival of this 1942 drama by Terence Rattigan – part of the playwright’s centenary-year celebrations – is a masterly piece of theatre. The big box-office draw may be Sienna Miller, but she’s by no means the star of the show: if there is one, it’s Sheridan Smith, whose performance is nothing short of glorious. But this is essentially a shattering ensemble work, in which every detail glows with truth, compassion and humanity, and where every seemingly ordinary second of life in an existence hemmed in by the ever-present threat of death is Read more ...
stephen.walsh
This latest BCMG concert had its pleasures; and it had its irritations. Among the pleasures was a pair of works, one of them newly commissioned, by the under-performed Japanese composer Jo Kondo. The irritations were of the BBC variety: long pauses between short works while technicians in headphones faffed around with microphones and music stands, in sovereign disregard for the convenience of a large paying audience.Finally Oliver Knussen, who has himself always done difficult things without palaver, brought the players on for Birtwistle’s Silbury Air while the technos were still faffing. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
By the trail of dead shall ye know Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd, who bounces back irascibly for a ninth and final series of Waking the Dead. For once, British TV has the edge over its American counterpart. While Jerry Bruckheimer's US series, Cold Case, always feels dragged backwards by its clunking reconstructions of ancient crimes (especially the device of using young actors to impersonate now-elderly perps in their prime), Waking the Dead manages to catapult its back-catalogue felonies vividly into the present.The unsolved mystery in this first two-part episode, Harbinger, dated Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Sir Colin Davis's year has not been a happy one. There've been heart problems, cancellations and, during a performance of The Magic Flute at Covent Garden last month, a major fall. Last night at the Barbican Hall he faced a strenuous Beethoven programme, the Third Piano Concerto with Jonathan Biss and the Seventh Symphony, and a new work by Romanian Vlad Maistorovici. Would the 83-year old conductor have enough energy to inject proceedings with the required welly?There was as much welly as you could wish for. Understandably, he had assigned the mastery of Maistorovici's Halo to an undertsudy Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The opening images have mighty symbolic heft. A boy dashing across a blasted wintry field compels a flock of birds to take to the air, hundreds if not thousands of them blackening sky and screen, squawking and flapping in cacophonous unison. Cut to a freight train, truck after truck, thundering under clouds across the barren land. Cut to two plastic deer parked outside a wooden prefab. By the end of this brief montage it is clear we are being invited into a world from which, for its tragic human inhabitants at least, there is no chance of escape.Ballast, from first-time director Lance Hammer Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A maypole greets you on entry to the Serpentine Gallery; don’t expect a cheery celebration of spring, though. Nancy Spero’s installation Maypole: Take No Prisoners II (2008) is a scream of rage against violence and its hapless victims. Dangling from coloured ribbons, dozens of decapitated heads hang in the air like an explosion of shrapnel. Mouths gape open in pain and terror - or is it hatred? One can’t be sure, since some seem to be spitting venom from bloody tongues as though, even in their death throws, they are intent on spreading a gospel of vengeance and destruction.The strength of the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s not often you find yourself advised at the start of a West End performance that “mobile phones, photography and fellatio are not permitted”, but then The Hurly Burly Show isn’t exactly your average theatrical fare. The first time the West End has seen a major burlesque revue, the show’s move from a small cabaret club in Soho to the Garrick Theatre reflects a changing attitude to this ancient art. If you believe the hype, women across the UK, in bedrooms, boardrooms and the tinned-goods aisle of Tesco, are all shedding their clothes and donning nipple tassels – in the name of female Read more ...
david.cheal
Bouncy: if there is one word that sums up this hot young Northern Irish band, that would be the one; there is a Tiggerish enthusiasm to their music that encourages bouncing, clapping, arm-waving and generally having a good time, which is exactly what happened at last night's gig: a festive atmosphere prevailed, Two Door Cinema Club played a short, sharp set that lasted for little more than an hour, and they sent the crowd out into the early spring night buzzing.A year ago Two Door Cinema Club were, as their choochy-faced singer Alex Trimble noted during this show, playing the Hoxton Bar and Read more ...
howard.male
On first hearing about Staff Benda Bilili - a Congolese band partly made up of paraplegics – I felt a little uneasy at the prospect of reviewing them. The last thing that one wants as a (hopefully) trusted critic is to feel compromised by an obligation to either give a positive review, or feel guilty about lessening their chances of bettering their circumstances with a bad review. Yes, rather embarrassingly, the vanity and solipsism of your reviewer has no limits.But this visual treat of a film wastes no time in informing us that there is no room for pity in the story of this resilient Read more ...