Reviews
Ismene Brown
Is it a thriller? Is it a character study? Leopards, Alys Metcalf’s two-hander about a middle-aged white charity executive – male – and a young job applicant of mixed race – female – goes under the colours of both, but falls short of either genre.A windy retread of a thesis with which few could safely disagree nowadays (let’s say – leopards don’t change their spots, especially male white salaried ones), it makes an underwhelming opener for Christopher Haydon’s tenure of the Rose Theatre, Kingston.Requested by the publicity team not to reveal the final twist of the 90-minute drama, I can Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
"I've seen things you people wouldn’t believe." It’s one of the most famous lines from Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, though in the past 18 months we’ve all seen things we would not have believed back at the start of 2020, when I originally secured my tickets for this show that had been scheduled for 26 March 2020.Set in 2019, Scott’s version of that year correctly foretold issues arising from overpopulation and the climate crisis, though instead of synthetic humans and flying cars, real-life 2019 saw the advent of a deadly virus and an ensuing global lockdown from which the UK Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s a little hard to tell if this film was really intended for an international release, given that its heart is so set on making Polish movie-goers proud of their countrymen. The Champion of Auschwitz recounts the true story of Tadeusz "Teddy" Pietrzykowski, a young bantamweight boxing champion from Warsaw who in 1940 was captured by the occupying Nazis as he tried to join the Polish army in France.He was one of the first wave of political prisoners sent to Auschwitz, who were used as slave labour to reconfigure the old Polish army barracks into a death camp. Pietrzykowski survived the Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Even if you miss the play’s title and do not recognise the writer’s name with the heft of reputation that comes with it, as soon as you see the black man and the white woman speaking in South African accents, you know that the tension that electrifies the air between them is real. "No normal sport in an abnormal society” was the rally cry of those boycotting the Apartheid regime, but there was no normal love, either – until, incredibly, the mid-80s. Yes, the mid-80s.Diane Page’s revival of Athol Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act at the Orange Tree Theatre howls Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Hilarious, potty-mouthed and mesmerisingly beautiful, Nadine Shah is on superb form at the Ramsgate Festival of Sound’s closing evening show. And aside from the banter there is, of course, that remarkable voice – hugely powerful and somehow perfectly suited to this enchanting outdoor venue. In fact, this is the first time the Winterstoke Sun Shelter has been used for a gig – I doubt it will be the last. It was simply magical. We are here to listen to possibly the last live performance of last year’s critically acclaimed album Kitchen Sink. The whoops and cat calls of “Club Read more ...
David Nice
After 14 years as principal conductor, Vasily Petrenko has left the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in top-league shape. The players must be as thrilled as we are that his successor, Venezuelan Armenian Domingo Hindoyan, carries the flame, catches the spark, call it what you will, with a distinct personality of his own, combining clariy and elegance in baton-wielding with a very watchable physical freedom. This Proms programme was well-tailored to presenting the new incumbent and the skills of each orchestral department in equal measure, and the star soloist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Read more ...
Daniel Lewis
Like any good writer, Claire-Louise Bennett loves lists. Lists are, after all, those moments when words, freed from grammar’s grip, can simply be themselves – do their own thing, show off, let loose. It doesn’t take much for Bennett to let one unfurl. At one point, she scans with obvious, epicurean delight an array of “little bottles and jars and ramekins” on a set of imaginary kitchen shelves, “each holding their own delectable though not always readily detectable specimen, capers, for example, capers, cornichons, cockles, truffles, tamarind, nutmeg, goose fat, juniper berries Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“We want you to see a doctor. You’ve changed, and not in a good way,” says Kathy’s underwhelming husband, Tim (Matthew Jure).We don’t know what Kathy (Cathy Naden, making her film debut) was like before, but as things stand she seems to be following her impulses gaily and uninhibitedly. In the first scene, we see her chatting to Nick (Jerry Killick), a laid-back, pony-tailed gardener at the museum where she works as an archaeologist. She admires his vintage BMW. He takes her up on her request to go for a spin; then they have sex in the back seat.This makes her late for a lecture she’s giving Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In Klem (meaning "clamp"’), we find ourselves in the calm, ordered and ordinary world of Amsterdam-Zuid. There are parents’ evenings to be attended, school plays to be watched. The area’s many pretty parks are just perfect for the early morning jog. Tall green bins stand in neat rows. Evenings are for helping children with their homework, or for going to choir practice, at which a widowed, serious, bespectacled tax official in the tenors might notice a romantic gaze coming in his direction from a hospital doctor in the sopranos, to the strains of Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei...Except that these Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It has become so hard to find funding for non-fiction films that many documentary makers now feel compelled to sell their stories as racy detective yarns, larded with dramatic scores and sneakily obfuscating narratives. There’s a piece of deception at the heart of Sam Hobkinson’s Misha and the Wolves which in this age of Holocaust denial, is distressingly slippery.The film starts out as a portrait of a little Jewish girl, Misha Defonseca, who was hidden with a Belgian family during WWII. Decades later, living in America she tells her synagogue an incredible, heart-rending story of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“She is a 20-year-old white New Yorker who sings like a 55-year-old black lady from Mississippi. The experts say she will do for soul pop what Dylan did for folk.” Lillian Roxon’s verdict on Laura Nyro appeared in her ground-breaking 1969 book Rock Encyclopedia, issued before Nyro’s third album New York Tendaberry.In January 1970, Life magazine ran a feature on Nyro which was headed “The Funky Madonna of New York Soul.” By then, New York Tendaberry was out. Her follow-up, Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat, was being recorded when the article appeared.Both descriptions demonstrate a unanimity Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Turns out John Wilson was playing the long game from the start. The dynamic British conductor eased his way into Proms schedules in 2007, establishing his John Wilson Orchestra as an annual festival fixture just two years later. Film music from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Broadway musicals, Bernstein and more all arrived gleaming – freshly polished and ready for their close-up. But, over a decade later, it turns out that Wilson was just prepping the musical ground, as this game-changing concert made abundantly clear.The Proms debut of Wilson’s Sinfonia of London was always going to be one to Read more ...