Reviews
David Nice
“Tell me,” The West Wing’s President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) asks of a right-wing TV host who uses the Bible to call homosexuality an abomination, “I’m interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21.7… What would a good price for her be?” He might also have cited Judges 11 and asked about sacrificing his daughter as thanks for victory over his enemies, the position of Israelite Jephtha having massacred the Ammonites.Handel and his librettist Thomas Morell in their oratorio about Jephtha’s rash promise are equivocal about the filicide, to say the least, and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTH Being Dead When Horses Would Run (Bayonet)Being Dead are ostensibly an indie trio from Austin, Texas, but that description doesn’t really do justice to their smörgåsbord sound. Their default setting seems to be Trashmen “Surfin’ Bird” (just check “Come On”) but they also enjoying fooling around with synths. They’re not easily categorizable. What they are is catchy, whether combining sing-along choruses with flamenco and dream-pop on “Daydream”, or inventing narcotic underwater country’n’western on the mournful, murky and bizarre “Livin’easy”. Three more comparisons (faint) Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
What a month, and what a day, for Michael Barenboim to bring the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble to London. Created in 1999 by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, the original West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has always impressed because it gathers Israeli, Arab and other regional musicians together not in some soppy, sentimental hope that music will miraculously heal the rifts and wounds of history – but in the belief that working in harmony on a great shared task can, potentially, open minds and hearts to others' lives and stories. The project aspires to build bridges not through pious rhetoric but, Read more ...
Gary Naylor
You really don’t want to pick up The Time Traveller’s Wife in a game of charades. Half the clock would be run down just showing that it’s a novel, a film, a TV series and a musical. That spawning of spin-offs over the last two decades is a testament to the appeal of Audrey Niffenegger’s characters and story, but their relatively lukewarm critical and popular receptions speaks to the difficulty of going from page to screen. Is it any more successful travelling from page to stage? For anyone who has not seen any of those previous adaptations, the plot is tricky to follow Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Friday’s double-header at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Southbank was not only one of the final gigs in this year’s K-Music Festival – entering its tenth year with an eclectic range of Korean artists and bands performing across London and beyond – but also one of the launch gigs for this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival, now entering its 31st year.Not that the word "jazz" fits all that well into either band’s soundscaping, whichevef way you stretch it. Jambinai’s sheet metal racket was paired with the angular, Pansori-inspired alt-K-Pop, (the narrative folk art of Pansori Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“We got to play Stonehenge Festival when it was like just a field, a generator and stage. No rip-off burger joints. No packaged new age culture. Just good British hippiedom. A bunch of scruffy, dirty, bean-burger-eating, spliff-making hippies, and in the middle, a bunch of Hell’s Angels.”Instead of a member of an early Seventies freak-rock band, the speaker is Mark Perry, the man behind Britain’s first punk rock fanzine, Sniffin’ Glue. He was talking about the summer 1978 tour his band Alternative TV undertook with Here and Now, an avowedly hippie-oriented combo with roots in the band Gong Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Pete Doherty’s notorious tabloid image as Kate Moss’s junkie rock star boyfriend blessedly faded following that relationship’s end, stopping short of Amy Winehouse territory. Katia deVidas’s documentary focuses on that addiction through his preferred self-image as a latter-day Rimbaud, a punk poet more suited to his current French home. The result is remarkably unvarnished, but narrowly framed.Devidas began by filming a Babyshambles gig in Paris, then became periodically embedded in Doherty’s life over 10 years, convinced he was a true artist, even as smack and crack defined his life. The Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A middle-aged man, expensively dressed and possessed of that very specific confidence that only comes from a certain kind of education, a certain kind of professional success, a certain kind of entitlement, talks to a younger woman. Despite the fact that she isn’t really trying, she’s attractive, bright and just assertive enough to weave a spell of fascination over men like him, with a tinge of non-dangerous exoticism evidenced by her East European accent to round things out. They are catnip to each other. And so it had been until almost two years ago. A torrid affair had been conducted, Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Chameleon among orchestras, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra hung up its habitual classical cloak in favour of an evening of 20th and 21st century minimalism, curated, presented, and conducted by the star percussionist Colin Currie.That this was a different sort of concert was obvious from the outset; before the concert, DJ Dolphin Boy was installed in the Queen's Hall foyer (pictured below), filling the surrounding spaces with rich ambient noise. On a freezing cold Edinburgh night the long bar was a haven of warmth, jostling with heavy coats, pints and cocktails. More of a party than a concert Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
There’s a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer, said Graham Greene, and that ice plays a part in French director Justine Triet’s superb fourth feature, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.Set in the French Alps, the film begins with successful novelist Sandra (an amazing Sandra Hüller, totally inhabiting the role) being interviewed at home by grad student Zoe (Camille Rutherford) for her dissertation. They’re drinking wine and chatting flirtatiously.Then music on a loop, an instrumental version of P.I.M.P. by 50 Cents, invades the chalet. It’s so deafening that the interview can’t continue Read more ...
aleks.sierz
As Christmas looms, ’tis the season for comedy. And even the traditionally austere Royal Court feels obliged to join in. So here we go again with the same team — writer Rory Mullarkey and director Sam Pritchard — who brought the colourfully cartoonish Pity to this venue in 2018. Their latest, Mates in Chelsea, is billed as a comedy of manners inspired by Oscar Wilde and PJ Wodehouse, with a nod to reality TV show Made in Chelsea, and stars Laurie Kynaston and George Fouracres. But, in a society where reality is so much more satirical than fiction, can the team pull off a fun show that Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The soundtrack to Tate Britain’s seminal exhibition Women in Revolt! is a prolonged scream. On film, Gina Birch of the punk band The Raincoats gives vent to her pent-up anger and frustration by yelling at the top of her lungs for 3 minutes (main picture). And in many ways, this whole exhibition is a scream of rage.Sick of being marginalised by the male-dominated art world and tired of being treated as second class citizens in every other walk of life, in the 1970s women artists went on the offensive. They began organising, protesting and demonstrating and making work that is, in itself, Read more ...