Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Between August 1966 and November 1967, The Syn played 36 shows at London’s high-profile Marquee Club. In June and September 1967 they issued two singles on the happening Decca subsidiary Deram, an imprint scoring hits with releases by Cat Stevens, The Move and Procol Harum. The Syn’s singles were voguish: tracks included the flower-power referencing “Flowerman” and “14 Hour Technicolour Dream,” its title borrowed from the recent underground event at Alexandra Palace. Amongst The Syn’s members were Peter Banks and Chris Squire, who went on to Yes. Regardless of all this, The Syn did not click Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Unless you happen to be a student of Italian language or culture, the significance of the 14th-century poet Dante Alighieri’s insights into the human condition may have passed you by, albeit that this year marks 700 years since his death. Where every educated Italian knows the stories and characters within La divina commedia like the back of their hand, we British generally draw a blank. That general ignorance is what The Dante Project is up against and it was a fantastic gamble on the part of the Royal Ballet to believe that a posse of creative talents – choreographer Wayne MacGregor, Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The cherry orchard in Anton Chekhov’s eponymous play is a classic MacGuffin, its existence a reason to stir the sorts of resentments, fancies and identity causes that start wars and revolutions. The orchard’s beautiful, and that’s all – a cultivated but natural ornament upon the great land of Russia, where need and want hold sway over millions of wretched and enslaved people.Have those breathtaking horizons of white blossoms any use other than that? Is there a greater importance to existence than being beautiful? Nearly 120 years on, the conundrum is just as vital, and the play is Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Remembering the months of lockdown, I can’t be the only person to thrill to this play’s opening lines, “When shall we three meet again?”, a phrase evocative enough to be borrowed as the first line of this year’s Wolf Alice album, Blue Weekend. Luckily, I didn’t have to brave thunder, lightning or indeed rain to see Oscar-nominated screen star Saoirse Ronan make her UK stage debut, opposite James McArdle, in this production of my favourite Scottish tragedy, directed by the equally award-laden Yaël Farber. But then the Almeida theatre, led by Rupert Goold, is a magnet for stars.It has to be Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There is a three song segment midway through Manic Street Preachers’ set which suddenly ramps everything up. For this brief while, the performance and response in the sold-out, nigh-on-2000-capacity venue, elevates the concert from another decent gig on another tour in front of a devoted fanbase, to something more memorable and truly electric. It also sums up the Welsh rock stalwarts’ unlikely fusion of socially aware poetics and cheesy rock which, at its best, can be exuberant and touching.Having come onstage to what sounds like a looped house rejig of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s last proper Read more ...
David Nice
Returning to LSO St Luke’s, formerly a beacon in the darkness of semi-lockdown for the lucky few allowed to feast upon the London Symphony Orchestra from the gallery, felt the same, yet different, like so much since most of the rules were relaxed. Players were now closer together, sharing stands; the sound felt denser too (it’s bound to be loud in such a space, however handsome). A decided plus was that one of the great communicators among soloists, LSO featured artist and viola champion extraordinaire Antoine Tamestit, faced the players – and most of us upstairs – as he stood alongside Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"I can't sleep": So goes the fateful opening line of White Noise, the Suzan-Lori Parks play disturbing enough to spark many a restless night in playgoers who are prepared to take its numerous provocations on board. To do so requires various suspensions of disbelief, one quite substantial, on the way to a finish that, in Polly Findlay's Bridge Theatre UK premiere, comes at least 20 minutes earlier than I recall from this play's Off Broadway debut in spring 2019. Comparative speed (the play still feels overwritten) isn't all that's changed in the trans-Atlantic crossing of this portrait of Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Two households, both alike in dignity … and both launching their respective seasons with a production of Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet. For neither the Royal Ballet nor its midlands sibling Birmingham Royal Ballet is this a surprising choice, given that it’s well over a year since either company was able to rally its forces in a full-blown three-act story ballet complete with full orchestra. Because there’s nothing quite like R&J for pulling a company together, with its teeming streetlife of squabbling servants, harlots and henchmen, its colourful elite and its stellar Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Time waits for no band, as Maximo Park’s lively singer Paul Smith opined early into his band’s set. “I am young and I am lost” he declared during "The Coast Is Always Changing"’s jangly guitar-pop, before drily admitting afterwards that he might have to retire those words soon enough. It’s over 20 years now since Maximo Park emerged as the thinking man’s indie rockers, all bursts of energy and romantic lyricism, and two of the quintet have departed along the way, in the shape of bassist Archis Tiki and keyboardist Lukas Wooller.Yet the albums and tours have continued regularly, save for the Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
With a few extra dates to her rescheduled UK tour, Scottish folk legend Karine Polwart returned to Birmingham Town Hall with some tunes from her latest album – Still as You’re Sleeping, an album of just voice and piano recording with jazz pianist Dave Milligan – plus a mix of earlier material, covers and traditional songs given her own signature twist. On stage with Polwart for this tour is her brother, guitarist Steven Polwart, and her neighbour and friend, multi-instrumentalist Inge Thomson. Opening with “Ophelia”, from the trio’s 2018 album Laws of Motion, the group at once performed with Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Outside Wales – even, perhaps, within it – few students will have run across the verse of Gwerful Mechain. The free-spirited poet of the late 15th century may come as a thrilling surprise (one of several) to readers of Mary Wellesley’s Hidden Hands. Gwerful was trained, probably by a family member, in the fiendish virtuosity of Welsh strict-metre verse-forms but barred from the all-male ranks of professional bards. Yet she sparred fearlessly in deftly-marshalled words with the conventions of her time. One notorious ode, preserved in 13 manuscript copies, spurns the drippy praise of girls’ Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
If it ain’t broke… on tour and in the Glyndebourne summer festival, Mariame Clément's production of Don Pasquale has gratified audiences for a decade now. It surely will again in Paul Higgins's spirited revival. The show returns to the Sussex house at the start of this year’s tour with the leaves about to turn but the gardens still ablaze with late-season colour.If Julia Hansen’s painterly 18th century designs offer an eye-delighting spread of pastoral prettiness, Donizetti’s piece itself ripostes with its tough-minded warning not to take appearances on trust, and to avoid confusions between Read more ...