Reviews
fisun.guner
There is probably only one thing that Ann Widdecombe and I have ever agreed upon: we both think it might be a really good idea to stick William Wilberforce on the Fourth Plinth. Why not? It’s nice to have contemporary art in Trafalgar Square, of course, but surely there are few other reforming characters as worthy as the great abolitionist? And Wilberforce was many other things besides – though not all of them would necessarily impress the nation to quite the same degree.In his youth – which here means before the age of 25 when he had already spent a year as a Tory MP in the county of Read more ...
david.cheal
I spent a long time waiting for this gig to take off, but eventually realised that it wasn’t going to happen. To begin with I thought the band were just pacing themselves, playing a slow-burning set that would eventually explode into life, opening with the modest thrum of “The Runaway”, and following it with the similarly restrained “Anyone’s Ghost” and “Mistaken for Strangers”. But in the end, although The National moved up through the gears and finished the show with a big warm finale, still, it all seemed a bit flat.The chief problem from what I could discern was that singer Matt Read more ...
Veronica Lee
With a script co-written by the Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, based on her 2004 book of the same title, Miral follows the interconnected lives of four women caught up in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s a sprawling, epic affair, directed by the New York painter turned film-maker Julian Schnabel.The 40-year story starts in 1948 war-torn Jerusalem, where the well-heeled Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) comes across a few dozen orphaned children huddled together, terrified, in a side street. She takes them to one of her family homes, gives them shelter and later founds the acclaimed Dar Al-Tifl Read more ...
Veronica Lee
This is the final production in the Donmar Warehouse’s 12-week season at Trafalgar Studios (which showcases the work of its resident assistant directors) and is a revival of Jeremy Sams’s translation of Jean Cocteau’s play - first seen in Sean Mathias’s acclaimed production at the National Theatre in 1994, with a cast that included Jude Law, Alan Howard and Sheila Gish.Director Chris Rolls, following in the wake of Lower Ninth and Novecento in the autumn season, has his work cut out with a play that often teeters dangerously between farce and melodrama. It’s not Cocteau’s greatest work - Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As New York gypsy punk live sensation Gogol Bordello tear into another Balkan rebel hoedown in front of a capacity Brighton crowd I'm reminded of an old Stones lyric, Jagger and Richards's 1971 classic "Dead Flowers": "When you're sitting there in your silk upholstered chair/ Talking to some rich folks that you know/ Well, I hope you won't see me in my ragged company/ You know I could never be alone". Gogol Bordello epitomise the rock'n'roll "ragged company", the scruffy outsiders.They revel in it. Extravagantly moustachioed frontman Eugene Hutz arrives on stage in a Homburg hat and shirt but Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
A hell of a lot of talent was on display last night at the Wigmore Hall, where pianist Leif Ove Andsnes's home festival of Risør was stationed for the weekend. The big draw was a performance of The Rite of Spring for two pianos. The work is violent enough in orchestral form but when jammed onto two keyboards it has the potential to degenerate into the most unimaginably demented hand-to-hand combat you'll ever see. Last night's performance - Andsnes facing off against a man that gets pianophiles like me pant-wettingly excited, Marc-André Hamelin - was little short of psychopathic. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It has been one of the most surprising hits this year in French cinemas - a mostly male film which poses deep and pertinent questions about religion or, more specifically, religions. Its ultimate theme is the price of Christian devotion. Of Gods and Men is set in, of all the uncinematic locations, a still, often silent Cistercian monastery in North Africa, from which it derives its muted aesthetic tone and extremely careful pace.The cast all give performances of great humanity and individualityAlthough it never specifically says as much until the end credits roll, the film is based on events Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Primal Scream's gig last night may well have been the loudest gig theartsdesk has ever attended. Three hours after returning home, my ears are still ringing like they've never rung before. At the time I didn't notice the volume though. I was enjoying the veteran band's emphatic performance too much to realise quite how many decibels were being pumped out.The main reason for the two-night stand at Olympia was the opportunity to perform the Mercury Award-winning 1991 album Screamadelica. Before that, however, there was the small matter of a quick greatest hits set. The surrogate Stones homage " Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Before Mozart, there was Pergolesi. The 18th century couldn't get enough of the Neapolitan prodigy. He was the first great tragic musical wünderkind of the Enlightenment, prefiguring what Mozart would become for the 19th century. Like Mozart, Pergolesi died prematurely aged just 26. Like Mozart, Pergolesi was a musical simplifier and distiller, a divine and revolutionary sieve. Like Mozart, Pergolesi's popularity spawned an industry dedicated to mythologising his life and misattributing the music of contemporaries to him. Yet we celebrate Pergolesi's 300th anniversary this year, quite unlike Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Few theatrical collaborations have been as successful as that achieved over five plays, two films, several decades, and numerous awards by the playwright Alan Bennett and the director Nicholas Hytner, who had jointly made a habit of art well before Bennett decided to write a play of that very name, premiered in November 2009 at the National Theatre. Now, More4 has come along with a documentary chronicling the two men's collaboration on a work that is itself about a collaboration. And if Adam Low's behind-the-scenes take on an essentially private meeting of minds leaves you wanting more, well Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What a pair of teases Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain are. The co-writers (and co-creators, with Andrew O’Connor) of Peep Show write only one short series of this sitcom each year but such is its pull that fans don't forget and move on to other offerings. No, we wait with mounting glee for the programme to return to our screens and, let joy be unconfined, the seventh series started last night.At first sight this limited but beautifully formed output appears to reflect rather neatly the personalities of Peep Show’s two main characters - the slacker Jeremy (Robert Webb) and the anally retentive Read more ...
David Nice
Events surrounding the birth of the unrepentantly "un-American" Marc Blitzstein's early (1936-7) shot at socially aware music-theatre prove much more interesting than the show itself. Heck, I got more out of reading the programme than I did sitting through the whole darned thing. Let's face it, Blitzstein's mostly foursquare marriage of words and music sucks. Not that the dynamic Mehmet Ergen's latest Arcola team didn't give it their best shot.
The Cradle Will Rock, you see, has as fascinating a history as its classically trained, pianistically gifted and homosexual creator (and you may Read more ...