Reviews
Markie Robson-Scott
Back in 1995, the name Brandon Lee made the headlines. Not the Brandon Lee as in son of Bruce, who’d recently met his death on the set of The Crow, but a schoolboy who’d chosen to use the same name. A strange hoax was uncovered. Lee was, in fact, Brian MacKinnon, and he was not 16 but 32, posing as a fifth-former at the august Bearsden Academy in Glasgow. He did, indeed, go back to his old school, where he was a pupil, first time around, in the 1970s. But why? Jono McLeod’s entertaining and original documentary – he was at Bearsden with Brandon/Brian – mixes Daria-style animation Read more ...
David Kettle
Ode to Joy (How Gordon Got to Go to the Nasty Pig Party), Summerhall ★★★★★You receive a glossary on your way in to James Ley’s high-voltage, high-camp Ode to Joy in the ancient, steeply raked lecture hall-cum-theatre of Summerhall’s Demonstration Room. Or to give the play its correct title, Ode to Joy (How Gordon Got to Go to the Nasty Pig Party). And if you’re not up to speed on Mandy, Ket and Pig Play, that glossary might well come in handy.Ode to Joy is a raucous, breathless, larger-than-life hour of theatre, and one whose title sums the work up perfectly: it’s a paean to pleasure, a Read more ...
David Nice
Essay-writing can be a great art, at least when executed by Hubert Butler of Kilkenny, on a par - whether you know his writing or not, and you should – with Bacon, Swift and Orwell. The same goes for speechifying. That level I witnessed, at the start of my three days at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, from Masha Gessen delivering the Hubert Butler Annual Lecture, and at the end from Professor Roy Foster, Fiona Shaw and the winner of this year’s Huber Butler Essay Prize, Kevin Sullivan.Disclosure first: it was my partner who set up the Prize as part of HEART London, a potential home for European Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Dystopian theatre takes many forms – but this is the first which is a jury-room drama. Dawn King has previously explored the world of double-think and the use of fear and fake news by oppressive regimes in her 2011 drama, Foxfinder, and now turns her attention to climate change litigation. With a twist. In The Trials, a jury of young people must deliver verdicts on the role of older individuals in contributing to the climate change. Since an overheating world is of burning interest to many young people, this Donmar Warehouse production is part of project involving schools and community Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Very good things have come to pass as a result the Mingus Centennial in April this year. A light has been shone not just on the jazz bassist and bandleader’s uniquely defiant spirit, but also on the astonishing extent of his emotional range and depth as a composer. The anniversary has, in essence, given an excuse for a re-evaluation of an indispensable and unique figure in 20th century music.There have been great one-off projects this year, such as the “Celebrating Mingus 100” concert at the Philharmonie in Berlin, mainly based on that fully-formed masterpiece, Mingus Ah Um from 1959; a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jake Lambert, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Jake Lambert warms up the audience by describing how much he enjoyed lockdown (despite a relationship break-up), and he suspects that football players enjoyed playing for a season without spectators too – “Whose job wouldn't be improved by removing thousands of people calling you a wanker?”But the pandemic is not the thrust of Liminal, merely the way into its main theme. Lambert has epilepsy (a subject he has addressed before in his comedy), and tells a touching story – punctuated by big laughs – about how he came to be diagnosed, and the help Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It does need saying: the RPO may receive less frequent plaudits than some of their London peers, but this is a fine and wonderfully responsive orchestra with a distinctive character.The string sections have a natural opulence and warmth in their sound and always work with an impressive unanimity of purpose right through to the back desks. The wind are blessed with characterful and persuasive principal players, plus that strong feel of a unified section. The brass rarely, if ever put a foot wrong. And the first group that Vasily Petrenko asked to rise to their feet at the end of last night’s Read more ...
Gary Naylor
There’s nothing quite like magic, live, up close and personal. Sure there are the TV spectaculars, the casino resort mega-shows and even The Masked Magician to pull back the curtains, but there’s a frisson in the air when the card that’s in your head appears in the conjuror’s hand. Roll in a spot of cabaret and circus and the tang of transgression tingles on the tongue, the grim world of the natural sliding away, the supernatural its welcome substitute. Such is the aim behind the West End’s new, purpose-built, magic/cabaret venue, Wonderville, the brainchild of creative director Laura Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
It is quite some years, if not decades, since the Edinburgh International Festival had any claim to be a festival of staged opera. This year we have had just one – Garsington Opera’s bewitching Rusalka – surrounded by a handful of concert performances: Beethoven’s Fidelio with the Philharmonia under Donald Runnicles, Handel’s Saul (yet to come), and Sunday evening’s Salome.There is, of course, much to be said for a really good concert performance; the bar was set almost unattainably high in the 1990s by Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s series of Mozart’s Da Ponte Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Hal Cruttenden, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ Hal Cruttenden is the kind of observational comic who talks about his home life a lot, so when his wife announced recently that their marriage was over it could have meant a quick swerve away from the personal stuff. But as it's an amicable break (they're still living in the same house) he can talk about it on stage.In It's Best You Hear It From Me Cruttenden details the pitfalls of long marriages, advancing middle age and now the awful prospect of being back on the dating scene. He poses the important questions of who gets the house, who Read more ...
David Nice
Two quirky concertos – one for orchestra, though it might also be called a sinfonietta – and a big symphony: best of British but, more important, international and world class. Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra sounded glorious throughout from my seat – at 7 of the Albert Hall clock if the conductor is at 12 – but the eccentric charms of Mark-Anthony Turnage and Vaughan Williams fared better than the elusive soul of Elgar.There’s no doubt about it, Turnage’s Time Flies is a brilliant opener for any concert (and accomplished youth orchestras ought to give it a go). Co-commissioned by Read more ...
David Kettle
"I feel I owe you an explanation." That much James Thierrée concedes partway through his sprawling, freewheeling, dream-like, hallucinatory Room in Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre. By which stage, most of the audience was probably in agreement. It’s a proposal he comes back to again and again during the rest of the show – but, of course, no explanation ever materialises, save a few strangulated noises, which seem about the best Thierrée can manage.With its weird, magical, disconnected images, its restless shifts in tone, its collision of dance, mime, acrobatics, music, circus, stagework and more, Read more ...