Reviews
Izzy Smith
Max Porter continues his fascination with the struggles of youth in his newest release, Shy: his most beautifully-wrought writing to date, an ode to boyhood and a sensitive deconstruction of rage, its confused beginnings, its volatile results, and all the messy thoughts in between.We follow the eponymous Shy, a teen of the 90s, whose Walkman-played drum-and-bass is his only solace from the relentless pressures of everyday life. The lyrics of DJ Randall, Congo Natty and the likes are scattered amongst foggy memories of his childhood, troubled dreams of the girl “who mutters in the walls Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Directed by Adrian Lyne, Fatal Attraction was the biggest-grossing film of 1987, and gave the world the term “bunny boiler”. Lyne isn’t aboard for Paramount’s new eight-part series, but the film’s screenwriter James Dearden is a major script contributor alongside the show’s creators Kevin J Hynes and Alexandra Cunningham.This isn’t a re-make, more like an expanded Fatal Attraction universe which develops the original story outwards and forwards in time. At its core is the brief affair between Dan Gallagher (Joshua Jackson), a Los Angeles county prosecutor, and Alex Forrest (Lizzy Caplan), who Read more ...
Saskia Baron
What is it that drives Belgian filmmakers to make sad and disturbing films about children? Is it the influence of the Dardennes Brothers, who over a 20-year career have made superb features exploring how brutally society treats its most vulnerable (Tori and Lokita, The Kid with a Bike, The Child among others)?My Belgian friend Anne-Marie Huby drily observes of her countrymen: “We are very adept at despair.” Is that it? Or is it that Belgian directors makes plenty of jolly action movies, costume dramas and romcoms but they just don’t win prizes at film festivals and hit the Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Paul Lewis secured his reputation as a leading advocate of the Viennese Classical repertoire with two releases of late Schubert sonatas on Harmonia Mundi. That was 20 years ago, but he returned to Schubert in 2022, with a release of earlier sonatas, music that requires more interpretive personality, something that Lewis can always provide.For these Wigmore recitals (this the first, the same programme is being repeated on 1 May), Lewis presents two of the late sonatas, D840 "Reliquie" and D845, plus one of the earlier works on his new album, D664. The results are as fine as ever, without any Read more ...
Jack Barron
The language of poetic technique is perhaps weighted towards rupture, rather than reparation: lines end and break, we count beats and stress, experience caesurae (literally ‘cuttings’), and mark punctuation (literally ‘to prick’). Juxtaposition sets things in contradistinction; sonnets have firm boundaries; conservatively, form protects tradition. Even free-verse was never free: Eliot’s famous formulation included the caveat that a simple meter must always – or cannot help but – haunt the poetic line. Poems, for their formal preservation, depend upon strict border-control.Customs is Iranian- Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Just when you’ve relaxed a little, privilege duly checked and confident that you won’t be guilt-tripped for nipping into that disabled loo a few years ago at the National (c’mon, the interval was nearly over and needs must), FlawBored drop a bomb into the narrative. The temperature in the room plummets, a real coup de théâtre is effected and I'm still processing it. Yep, they went there. After garnering awards at the Vaults Festival (that’s not research, they tell you and they tell you why too), Aarian Mehrabani, Chloe Palmer and Samuel Brewer (pictured below) bring their meta- Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
For its 22nd concert the hugely successful initiative, Through The Noise, took its audience to The Jago in Dalston, the live music venue formerly known as Passing Clouds. Here, on a stage more familiar with reggae, blues and Afrobeat, 25-year-old classical trumpeter Aaron Akugbo joined forces with harpist Milo Harper (pictured below) for a series of sultry, haunting numbers that explored the possibilities of this unusual pairing.Both players are rising stars of the classical music scene – Akugbo will make his Proms solo debut later this year with the Haydn Trumpet Concerto while the multi Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Before even a note was struck, Yard Act’s singer James Smith was setting the bar high. “Over the past two days everyone we’ve met in Glasgow has been telling us this is the best gig we’ll ever play”, he declared, as soon as the Leeds band arrived onstage. They then proceeded over the following 70 minutes to deliver on that expectation, with an evening that’s among the best the storied old Barrowland has ever seen.That might sound like overzealous hype, but this was a beefed up set that possessed power, passion and playfulness all at once. This current short jaunt for the group is essentially Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Russo brothers, makers of Amazon Prime’s much-hyped, $300m new spy drama, decided to keep the concept simple – it’s Good versus Evil. In the Good corner we have Citadel, a super-secret global spy network which has the modest ambition of keeping everybody, everywhere in the world, safe.The black-hat guys with the mean expressions and sometimes beards are agents of Manticore, a malign SPECTRE-style operation funded by eight super-wealthy families who want to control everything, everywhere in the world. Manticore – is it really named after Emerson Lake & Palmer’s 1970s record label? – Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
One of the essays in the booklet accompanying Loma Northern Soul describes the titular label as an “outlet aimed at secondary or tertiary record markets, issuing product that it was hoped would prove strong in R&B radio, yet had the potential to crossover and do battle with Motown in the pop charts”.In this reading, Loma Records was either addressing distinct markets – as other labels specifically did for, say, country – or was a dumping ground for recordings which didn’t make the grade as records which could be promoted as chart friendly or for pop radio. Or some of both at the same time Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Does the “special relationship” really exist? Judging by Netflix’s sparky new political drama, yes it does, with London-based CIA agent Eidra Graham (Ali Ahn) going out of her way to spell out the unique intelligence-sharing arrangements between the US and the UK. Just as long as everyone remembers that the Americans are well and truly in charge, nothing can possibly go wrong.The titular diplomat is Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), who thought she was about to be posted to Kabul but is instead diverted to become the US ambassador in London, following an attack on a British aircraft carrier in the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
There was a jolting eco-themed work onstage in London recently, but sadly A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, a Headlong company collaboration with director Katie Mitchell and a number of international producing houses, wasn’t it. The performance that jolted all who saw it was by Nederlands Dans Theater, whose NDT1 group brought to Sadler’s Wells Figures in Extinction [1.0], a powerful piece by Complicite’s Simon McBurney and the choreographer Crystal Pite. The dancers twisted their limbs and torsos into imitations of 12 of the now-lost species McBurney selected to read out Read more ...