Reviews
Gavin Dixon
It is mid-way through the new Ring cycle, and we are taking lunch outside the old town hall on the high street in Bayreuth. Discussion at neighbouring tables is intense: “The Ring is a child!”, “Why does Wotan have no spear?”, “The pyramid in the box – what is that all about?”The new production, by Austrian director Valentin Schwarz, is streamlined and modern. It clears away much of Wagner’s symbolism and reassigns the narrative to new and disparate ideas. The reception has been decidedly mixed, but many of the new concepts deserve careful consideration.The production, and the entire Bayreuth Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!, Summerhall ★★★★★ What a pleasure to be in the audience for this terrific musical whodunnit, about best friends Kathy (Bronté Barbé ) and Stella (Rebekah Hinds), who live in Hull and have a podcast devoted to “in-depth chat about murders”, the grislier the better. So when their heroine, crime writer Felicia Taylor (Jodie Jacobs) is decapitated shortly after they meet her, they set about finding her murderer.What follows is pure joy as the cast of five (three of them playing multiple roles) sing, dance and emote their way through a story littered with Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Danny Elfman – the punk rocker-turned-film composer behind Batman, Spider-Man, Edward Scissorhands and The Simpsons – reports that he felt sceptical when first approached to write for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Why? Simply because “they were a youth orchestra”. As Homer himself might say, “D’oh!”.Ask where Elfman has been hiding these last many decades and the answer is “Hollywood”. Tinseltown’s soundscapes (and sound-stages) lie unmissably behind the work that – duly enlightened about the NYOGB’s excellence – he went on to produce. Wunderkammer, named for the Romantic-era Read more ...
David Kettle
In retrospect, all the clues were there. A star actor embarking on a new performance genre; a fresh reappraisal of one of Scotland’s cultural icons; a hi-tech production of sumptuous video and prop trickery; a dance score from a major name in new Scottish music. In short, a solo dance show from Alan Cumming about Robert Burns. What could possibly go wrong?It would be easy to say: everything. But although Burn has some serious issues, its constituent parts are (largely) pretty persuasive, and often very impressive. Cumming (who co-creates, alongside choreographer Steven Hoggett) is his usual Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Joseph Heller grew tired of being told that he’d never written anything as good as Catch 22. ‘Who has?’, he'd retort. In the same spirit, it’s futile to compare Gilbert and Sullivan’s late flop Utopia, Limited to The Mikado, The Gondoliers, Iolanthe or The Pirates of Penzance.So it’s not as good. Well, what is? True, you’ll meet occasional Savoyards who claim it’s their personal favourite, just as there are Mozartians (seriously, they walk among us) who maintain that La Clemenza di Tito is their personal number one. Sure, you mutter as you edge slowly away, trying to avoid eye contact. Read more ...
David Kettle
Boy, Summerhall ★★★★ Nature or nurture? It’s the perennial question behind so much in human development – and the central issue, too, behind Carly Wijs’s very moving Boy for Flemish theatre company De Roovers at Summerhall.Twins Brian and Bruce had to endure intimate surgery as babies – an experimental procedure that, when it goes wrong, leaves Bruce as Brenda. At least that’s outcome advised by a Harvard-educated quack, who assures the aghast mother and father that, with sufficient hormones and parental guidance, he really will become a girl.Wijs tackles one of the most divisive issues of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Les Dawson: Flying High, Assembly George Square ★★★ Any opportunity to watch impressionist Jon Culshaw at work is not to be missed. Here he gives a spot-on rendition of the gruff-voiced comic who hosted BBC’s Blankety Blank in the 1980s and was famous for his mother-in-law gags and deliberately bad piano-playing: “All the wrong notes in exactly the right order.”It’s a shame then that Tim Whitnall’s play (directed by Bob Golding) offers simply a run-through of a few of the low and high points of Dawson’s life and career, using the unambitious construct of him dictating his Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After a burst of gun-shot drumming, “Hot Coffee” instantly hits its groove. Simple but insistent guitar, a rubbery bass line and electric organ all fall into line. For the instrumental’s two-and-half minutes, it is unstoppable.“Gig Soul Party” is as tight but more ornate as the organ playing incorporates flourishes. There’s a spindly solo guitar line and some funky-drummer drumming too. But it’s as effective. Dance floors would have been crowded.Then there’s “Soul Crazy,” another instrumental with the same emphasis on a rigid rhythmic foundation and forward motion. A guitar solo is minimal Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Bankruptcy, rubble, rape and murder: Manhattan in the Seventies could be grim, as multiple New York punk memoirs make clear. The trade-off was the art, steaming and burning in the stinking, crucially cheap degradation. Punk was just one symptomatic part of a crumbling Lower East Side where old Beats, folkies, jazzers, poets, theatre, film and visual artists also lived.The point of Danny Garcia’s Nightclubbing doc is to stake Max’s, Kansas City’s claim as a punk epicentre, and challenge CBGB’s fabled status. Despite a few key interviewees, his low-budget, artless film does no one any favours. Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
How old is Emile de Becque? Perhaps because my first Emile was the 1958 film version’s Rossano Brazzi, my vision of the lonely French plantation owner in the South Pacific during the Second World War has been coloured by that casting: a visibly greying, slightly stiff man with correct manners who conforms to the vague description “middle-aged”.Brazzi was actually only 42 when the film was released; another great Emile, Broadway’s Paolo Szot, was nudging 40 when he started playing the role. So why does Julian Ovenden, 45, seem almost overly youthful as Emile in Daniel Evans’s Chichester Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tiff Stevenson, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ Tiff Stevenson doesn’t like labels, and is particularly irritated by how the once mildly mocking insult “Karen” is now just another misogynistic slur. So she invented a label for herself, Sexy Brain, which is the title of her show, and over the hour she explains how she arrived at itShe suffers from ADHD, or rather she diagnosed herself with it after failing to complete a bunch of online surveys (a symptom, apparently), and decided she has a sexy brain. Sexy as in mysterious – you know, the way women are supposed to be.Much of this is Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Alexei Sayle, in his angry young man phase, once said that you can always tell when you’re watching a Shakespeare comedy, because NOBODY'S LAUGHING. That’s not entirely true, of course, but sometimes a director has to go looking for the LOLs and make a few sacrifices along the way in their pursuit. And, boy, oh boy, does Sean Holmes go looking for the laughs in this production of The Tempest – and don’t we suffer a few sacrifices as a consequence.The storm itself is a bit of water sprayed on The Globe’s famous groundlings, with our aristocrats boozing and partying like superannuated Club 18- Read more ...