Reviews
Gary Naylor
A play’s title can be an almost arbitrary matter – there’s no streetcar but plenty of desire in that one for example – and it might have crossed Kim Davies’ mind to call her play Ms Julie, since it is a reimagining of August Strindberg’s 1888 masterpiece, Miss Julie. Thankfully, that title was spiked and not just because it’s trite. Smoke gives us a key to unlock a complicated, clever and challenging play unafraid to treat its audience as grown-ups and all the more rewarding for that.Sami Fendall’s set comprises a square shallow pit filled with black sand with an upturned Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The New York Dolls, The Ramones, Suicide, Television, Blondie, The Dictators, The Heartbreakers, The Shirts, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. From 1974 onwards, New York buzzed with bands. There were also Tuff Darts, The Fast, Pure Hell, Von Lmo and others who didn’t quite grab the brass ring. Out of towners like The Dead Boys, Pere Ubu, Devo and The Real Kids jostled for attention too.Despite the crowded market, The Senders were central to this mix. Formed in 1976 by ex-pat Frenchman Philippe Marcade, who had arrived in New York in 1974, they issued one single in 1978, a seven-track 12-inch EP Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Bald, barrel-shaped and pugnacious, Doron Kavillio (Lior Raz) could have been conceived as the anti-Bond or the un-Ethan Hunt. But as action heroes go, Doron can mix it with the finest as he tracks down terrorists with his comrades in Israel’s Mista’arvim Special Forces team.Raz is the star – or one of them – of Fauda, as well as its co-creator (along with Avi Issacharoff). As a real-life veteran of an Israeli counter-terrorism unit operating in the Palestinian territories, he’s been able to bring a raw edge of verisimilitude to the show, even if the action has obviously been shaped for a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Shrek universe expands a little more with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, another computer-animated family film from DreamWorks, with Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek Pinnault reprising their roles as Puss and his frenemy Kitty Softclaws. Directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado serve up a treat, one worthy of its Oscar nod for best animated feature.As with all the Shrek Cinematic Universe output, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish subverts fairytales and nursery rhymes while telling its story, and part of the fun is seeing which the writers Paul Fisher, Tommy Swerdlow and Tom Wheeler plunder Read more ...
Gary Naylor
If All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida have earned the sobriquet "‘problem plays", what price Titus Andronicus? Does a director seek out a Saw vibe for the horror? Do they go for a deadpan Spinal Tap’s disappearing drummers for the demises? Do you go hard and locate the murders within the atrocities being committed on European soil right now? In her radical interpretation, Jude Christian never quite finds the consistency of tone that the three-hour long evening requires – we get the discomfort intended, but it’s distracting not disturbing.We open on Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Yes, Brendan Fraser gives a fine, Oscar-nominated performance as a morbidly obese man in director Darren Aronfsky’s mawkish, voyeuristic The Whale. Best known for Gods and Monsters, George of the Jungle and the Mummy trilogy, and more recent TV roles in The Affair and Trust, it’s Fraser’s first lead in a film for 12 years. But one of The Whale’s many problems is the way the fat suit, or, to give it its correct term, weight-gain prosthetic, takes up so much mental as well as physical space. That’s hardly surprising – it’s been nominated for an Oscar too. When Fraser first saw it he Read more ...
David Nice
Salome was not to get her head on a silver platter: Jennifer Davis, due to sing the bloody final scene of Strauss’s opera, had been experiencing abdominal pains during her first pregnancy – mother and child are fine – and had to withdraw at a late stage. Yet Jakub Hrůša, witness to her potential in the Royal Opera revival of Wagner’s Lohengrin which led to his appointment as Pappano’s successor there, took the Philharmonia all the way in a still-dazzling programme.In fact this performance of the replacement work, Strauss’s Don Juan, a familiar test-piece of interpretative skills, would have Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The set of 2:22 A Ghost Story is open to the auditorium when we arrive and locates us at once in gentrification-land. We are in a slick kitchen with white chevron tiling, new units and an obligatory island; big skylights loom overhead and outsize glass doors lead to the back garden - and the foxes. Their mating screams will terrifyingly punctuate the action, at maximum decibels.Except… the more you look at this set (excellent design by Anna Fleischle), the more you start noticing strange details. The walls aren’t finished and layers of old wallpaper have been peeled off and left as they are; Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s been a good year for donkeys at the cinema. Not only did Martin McDonagh make a surprise star out of Jenny the miniature donkey in The Banshees of Inisherin, but she’ll be competing at the Oscars with the title character of EO, Jerzy Skolimowski’s paean to beautiful Sardinian donkeys. The veteran Polish director has crafted a film like no other, weaving together extraordinary images with a devastating score by Pawel Mykietyn. We first meet Eo performing with a travelling circus. He’s led through his tricks in the ring by his devoted trainer Kasandra ( Read more ...
David Nice
It’s always a disappointment when the Venusberg orgy Wagner added in 1861 to his original, 1845 Tannhäuser to suit Parisian tastes gives way to foursquare operatic conventions. Especially so in this revival of Tim Albery’s 2010 production, where Jasmin Vardimon’s choreography (pictured below) seems executed with more brilliance than ever and post-viral vocal problems loomed large last night for this hero.The static nature of the rest of the evening, though, - Wagner’s problem, accentuated by Albery, though his living tableaux are well managed - is redeemed by exceptional singing-acting from Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s the sound of the sun. Panda Bear – born Noah Lennox – is singing in a voice with the purity and warmth of Brian Wilson. Beside him, Sonic Boom – Pete Kember – has more of a growl, a timbre which might make announcements in a railway station. The contrast works well. Sweet and slightly sour.And, in another way, it is the sound of the sun. Kember and Lennox both live in balmy Portugal and here they are in Aalborg, at the top end of Denmark at the Northern Winter Beat festival. It’s freezing out, with the Jutland wind coming off the Limfjord a few streets away bringing it down to a level Read more ...
Saskia Baron
You Resemble Me is the very definition of a passion project, and all the better for it. First-time director Dina Amer was a journalist working for Vice News. She was sent to Paris to cover the 2015 terrorist attacks that left 130 people dead and hundreds more injured. Amer was on the scene when the police raided a flat where the terrorists were based. A young woman who died in the explosion was widely proclaimed to be France’s first female suicide bomber. The news was filled with lurid tales about Hasna Aït Boulahcen, a daughter of Moroccan immigrants who had swapped Read more ...