Reviews
Jenny Gilbert
If I had to sum up in a single impression the work I’ve seen of Brighton-based, Israeli-born choreographer Hofesh Shechter (now OBE), it would be that of a rock gig. His shows are noisy, populous affairs, and he writes his own drumbeat-driven music. There is invariably dry ice, harsh stadium-style lighting, and looping crescendos so long and so loud that your vertebrae start to thrum. Double Murder, however, is not like that. It’s a bit of a puzzle, not least because its title suggests a two-part onslaught that doesn’t transpire.“There’s always an assassination at some point” asserts someone Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Despite an alluring cast which includes Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd and Kevin Kline, The Starling is doomed to be remembered, if at all, as a slender idea unsatisfyingly executed. Directed by Theodore Melfi from a screenplay by Matt Harris, it’s the story of Lily (McCarthy) and Jack (O’Dowd), a couple whose domestic dream was blown apart by the death of their baby daughter Katie.The past is filled in as the narrative ambles along, from scenes of the pair eagerly imagining what career their new baby might take up (podiatrist? Vegetarian butcher?) to the gradual realisation that all bets are Read more ...
Florence Hallett
When you stand in front of Helen Frankenthaler’s Freefall, 1993, in your mind you drop into its gorgeous, blue abyss. It is enveloping, vertiginous, endless and yet there’s none of the terror of falling into a void, only intense, velvety comfort as the bluest blue melts into emerald green.Its large scale, and gestural splashes of colour are supremely painterly, and yet this is not a painting but a print, its free flowing, spontaneous-looking marks the result of multiple, effortful iterations recorded in proof after painstaking proof (main picture: Freefall, 1993).Helen Frankenthaler was one Read more ...
aleks.sierz
God is a tricky one. Or should that be One? And definitely not a He. So when she says take revenge, then vengeance is definitely not only hers, but ours too. American playwright Aleshea Harris’s dazzlingly satirical 2018 extravaganza is about two women seeking justice and getting even, and it comes to the Royal Court from New York, trailing shouts of enthusiasm and the Obie Award for Playwriting. Unlike many plays about African-Americans this one is refreshingly free from cliché, and this new production does it complete justice.The set up is gloriously surreal. Two 21-year-old twins, Racine Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
On its surface, a biopic of a late-Victorian artist starring big British talents including Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrea Riseborough and Claire Foy, sounds like typical awards fare for this time of year. Will Sharpe, best-known for directing the dark TV comedy Flowers (starring Olivia Coleman who is on narrating duties for this film), and drama series Giri/Haji, offers just that.Charting the tragic life of Louis Wain, an artist-cum-inventor who was plagued with mental health problems, Sharpe’s film has a magical, surrealist, Dickensian quality. Much like Armando Iannucci’s David Copperfield, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Incredibly it’s now 40 years since the release of Duran Duran’s debut album. To mark this event, the remaining members of the band’s classic line-up decided to return to Birmingham. Not to the NIA or any similar-sized venue, but for a couple of intimate gigs at the city’s O2 Institute. Fortunately, “intimate” didn’t mean getting out the acoustic guitars for rounds of their greatest hits but it was nevertheless quite a shock to see these megastars playing a room that holds 1,500 on a good day and must be little more than 30 metres from the stage to the back wall.In keeping with the premise of Read more ...
David Nice
What a way for the Multi-Story Orchestra, conductor Christopher Stark and composer Kate Whitley to celebrate 10 years of pioneering activity in Peckham and beyond. This should surely have been a Proms special in the Royal Albert Hall; the scale and sound of Our Future in Your Hands, Whitley’s hour-long eco-cantata, environmental oratorio, call it what you will, setting crystallised texts by poet and director Laura Attridge, demand nothing less.Yet having the orchestra and a lusty chorus of 97 Peckham schoolchildren right in your face, the length of one car-park level, immersed listeners of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey instantly sets its controls for an excursion into the interstellar void between gaseous and solid objects. Opening cut “Intoxication” begins with lightly pulsing bass and a keyboard texture. Shimmering guitar floats over the top. Though more sparse and lacking vocals, it’s as if Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” were performed by an earlier model of the band which had focussed on reducing performative grandeur as much as possible.There’s another evocation. When “Intoxication’s” treated guitar arrives, it has a Robert Fripp flavour. The King Crimson Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This was, said bassist Michael Janisch, his first gig since January last year, and his crack group’s Monday evening set, kicking off at the un-jazzy hour of 6.30pm, was an energising, dynamic group performance from A-list British musicians who are band leaders in their own right. They are Empirical’s alto-saxophonist Nathaniel Facey; his childhood friend – and one of Britain’s finest drummers (and fellow Empirical member) – Shaney Forbes; fellow Whirlwind Recordings artist, tenor saxophonist George Crowley; and on the keyboards and synths, Rick Simpson, whose own quartet was touring its Read more ...
David Nice
Another season, another new production of Verdi’s nastiest masterpiece. For which we should be profoundly grateful after the tribulations of the last 18 months. Yet how quickly elements of the routine can corrode the soul of the spectator, just as fresh, urgent communication can set it alight.That communication Royal Opera Music Director Antonio Pappano displays with a true magician’s sense of pace and sleight of hand, deftly transitioning from hollow comedy to ugly tragedy, alert as ever to the needs of his soloists, and the Royal Opera men’s chorus is with him all the way. On the other hand Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It’s been described as “the most improbable story that has ever happened in the art market”, and The Lost Leonardo reveals every twist and turn of this extraordinary tale. In New Orleans in 2005, a badly-damaged painting (pictured below left) sold at auction for $1,175. It was listed as a copy of a Leonardo da Vinci, but the buyers – dealer Robert Simon and Alexander Parish, who searches for overlooked masterpieces – believed it might be the real thing, a painting known as Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World) by the Renaissance master himself.Even Parish admits the idea was ludicrous. “ Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
In some deep imagined past, watching the Last Night of the Proms on telly was one of those national collective experiences, like watching the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. But that was pre-indyref1, pre-Brexit, and before it became unfashionable to celebrate our imperialist past with patriotic ditties like Rule, Britannia!Covid-19 has taken its toll too: the Albert Hall stage sparsely populated by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under principal conductor Sakari Oramo (pictured below), the chorus and BBC singers dotted at safe intervals around the choir stalls, and no huge “Proms in the Read more ...