Reviews
anne.billson
When were you last horrified by a horror movie? Really horrified, that is, as opposed to merely creeped out, or disgusted, or amused. Black Death is a proper horror movie, for grown-ups rather than ADD-afflicted teens, and I'll wager grown-ups will be duly horrified by it. Not because of the gore - although it does have a fair amount of that - but because it takes you on a real journey into the heart of darkness, and you might not like what you find there.This Anglo-German production is the fourth film from Bristol-born director Christopher Smith, who has been steadily improving since his Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Shirin Neshat's often compelling Women Without Men spirits us back to Tehran 1953, and the political atmosphere surrounding the British- and American-supported coup that deposed Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. But the director counterpoints unrest on the streets with the fate of four women who end up in their own private haven, an apparently mystical orchard that provides them with a temporary escape, not only from the politics of the outside world but from the roles in Persian society that they are expected to occupy. Add in strong elements of magical Read more ...
judith.flanders
Surrealism, it occurred to me while looking round this fine exhibition, is like pornography: it is hard to define, but everyone knows it when they see it. The Surreal House examines what precisely is conjured up in our collective minds by the word “house”: houses are, of course, simply places to live, but their emotional resonance is much deeper, and it is this resonance, and how it acted on, and in turn was acted upon, by a century of artists working in the Surrealist mode, that is on display here.The early Surrealists, led by André Breton, were deeply influenced by Freud. Freud saw the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the musical theatre (Paradise Found, anyone?), along comes The Fantasticks, and we are returned to square one. How can this be, I hear you asking, given the record book entries clocked up by a Tom Jones/ Harvey Schmidt confection that ran Off Broadway continuously for over four decades before closing in 2002? (It then reopened at a midtown Manhattan venue in 2006.) Well, what may seem charming and whimsical in one context can be wince-inducing in another. Let's just say that I arrived at The Fantasticks infinitely willing to surrender to its Read more ...
graeme.thomson
A few years ago I wrote a book about Willie Nelson. Keith Richards supplied the introduction – a Kafkaesque saga which deserves a book in itself - during which he opined that Willie had a severe case of “white line fever”. This (for once) had nothing to do with exotic Peruvian powders and everything to do with the odd compulsion that keeps a man in his late seventies on the road for nine months of each year, rattling around the world in a bus while his wife and kids make hay in Hawaii.Last night I again realised how perceptive Richards’ words were. There are times during a Willie Nelson Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Performance poetry, I am told, is the new rock ’n’ roll. Poetry nights may vie with comedy at venues up and down the country, and a new generation of twentysomething urban poets and rappers are certainly strutting their stuff, but I’m yet to be convinced that it’s the burgeoning success that promoters would have us believe. Still, the first of two Pop-Up Poetry evenings of “poetry stand-up style” in the upturned purple cow on London’s South Bank gave me a chance to sample some of the artform’s best-known performers, and it confirmed my view that it’s a very mixed bag in terms of style, Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Within two bars of the overture starting, the first flashes could be seen. English National Ballet’s arena Swan Lake at the Albert Hall - they make no bones about it now - is intended for people who rarely go to the ballet. Actually it is in many cases for people who have no compunction about talking and taking pictures through the ballet quite routinely.The most eyecatching movement to be seen last night from my stalls seat was the constant toing-and-froing of ushers throughout the performance to reprimand members of the audience for holding up their damn mobiles in video mode, bold as you Read more ...
Matt Wolf
What happens when shlock is ennobled to something resembling a state of grace? The answer is on emotionally capacious view in Letters to Juliet, a by-the-books romcom that is raised beyond the ordinary, and then some, by the presence of the great Vanessa Redgrave. The English septuagenarian's lustre will matter not one whit to those drawn to the movie by Mamma Mia! alumna Amanda Seyfried, playing a fish-eyed observer of, and eventual participant in, the wonders wrought by love. But those wanting to experience amazement first-hand should look no further than Redgrave, who takes a generically Read more ...
fisun.guner
Satire, like roast beef, is what Brits are famous for and this exhibition takes us right back to its earliest days in graphic print. In the 1600s, Dutch allegorical prints were adapted by British printmakers to comment on contemporary issues and one of the first examples in this exhibition is a print that illustrates the purportedly cruel and barbarous treatment meted out by the Dutch to the English at the outset of the Anglo-Dutch war - so it’s hardly rib-tickling stuff.This is before we get to Hogarth’s moral outrage and thence to the birth of political satire’s golden age with the big Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Anyone who saw Ben Stiller in Zoolander will know that he is a very fine actor. He made his over-the-top character both believable and lovable (well, up to a point on the latter, but you know what I mean) while playing the fashion model’s absurdities for every laugh he could get. And now a fascinating counterpoint comes with his touching and beautifully reined-in portrayal of another narcissist, Roger Greenberg, a 41-year-old failed musician turned carpenter who is recovering from a breakdown.Greenberg has been living in New York for 15 years and returns to Los Angeles to housesit for his Read more ...
David Nice
A pall of ennui hangs over the 1930s drawing room of the National’s latest Rattigan revival, as deadly as the boredom its burnt-out party people all dread. The trouble is, I’m not sure to what extent the playwright intended it.To write about the etiolated and the unfocused, the lost souls of the inter-war years, needs energy and clarity. Here, though, some of us went away feeling muddy-headed irritation rather than sympathy at the end of a long evening. That might partly be ascribed to a script that thrusts forward melodrama when it needs truth, but a less than perfect Lyttelton ensemble didn Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A second coming for Michael Clark's recent Barbican commission Come, Been, Gone. Eight months after the London premiere (on which I opined unenthusiastically below last October), he has added another 20 minutes of choreography, they said, with new costumes and artworks. The revision is also now artfully retitled Come, Been and Gone. Not comma-Gone. And Gone. Makes all the difference. Furthermore, note the following revisions to the individual section names: the original "Come" is now entitled "Been", "Been" has actually gone, and been replaced by a new "Come" (that’s the inserted part) while Read more ...