Reviews
Fiddler on the Roof, Barbican review - lean, muscular delivery ensures that every emotion rings true
Rachel Halliburton
It’s always a risk when a production changes venue. In the curious alchemy of live performance, no-one can be sure whether a shift in surroundings might rob a show of the glitter and allure it once had.For Jordan Fein’s impassioned, magical Fiddler on the Roof that must have been doubly the case after critics raved about the ingenious way he had worked with Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s capricious outdoor setting. The timing of the song "Sunrise, Sunset" – marking the wedding of Tevye’s daughter Tzeitel – to fall shortly after dark was a particular cause for delight.So it’s a pleasure to Read more ...
Heather Neill
Terence Rattigan's rehabilitation – some might almost say deification – as a leading 20th century playwright is complete. As well as academic studies, biographies and numerous highly respected revivals of his work, there is a growing clamour to accord him the ultimate, deserved, honour: a theatre bearing his name.The latest production of The Deep Blue Sea, starring Tamsin Greig and receiving plaudits in the West End, is just the most recent revival in the ongoing reappraisal of Rattigan's work elsewhere. The Orange Tree has already played a part in this, with productions of French Without Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
In 2012, the award-winning American writer Sarah Ruhl met a Yale playwriting student who became a special part of her life. Out of their friendship she created Letters from Max, a 2018 book of their correspondence, then a play performed in New York in 2023.On the page, it’s a piece with a level of diction befitting two poets who like to recite their latest work to each other, sometimes more like a poetry reading than a play. But interspersed is the sparky dialogue between the two, the skinny student in his early twenties and the established playwright, mother of three, two decades older. Read more ...
Mark Sheerin
Botanical forms, lurid and bright, now tower above a footpath on a moor otherwise famed for darkness and frankly terrible weather. But the trio of 5m-high contemporary sculptures grow in place here, drawing life from limestone soil. These metallic buds, blooms and supersize tubers reflect a deep, tropical past that predates the very English landscape we now associate with this part of the world.So artist Vanessa da Silva invites you to reconnect with 300 million years of history by sitting here a while. When the sun is out, as it was on the opening weekend of Bradford 2025, you might reflect Read more ...
David Nice
Chelsea Opera Group has made its own luck in winning the devotion of two great bel canto exponents: Nelly Miricioiu between 1998 and 2010, Helena Dix over the past 10 years. Last night was Dix’s official farewell before moving back to her native Australia. La Straniera may be a relative dud among Bellini’s operas, but it allows its soprano grace, poise and careful fireworks. An excellent cast reflected her mastery; but the conducting nearly sank the enterprise. What this too often pedestrian score needs is verve. Stephen Barlow, head in score throughout, let even insignificant connecting Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Netflix’s new detective-noir is a somewhat cosmopolitan beast. It’s written and directed by an American, Scott Frank, derived from a novel, Mercy, by the Danish crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, and set in Edinburgh (as well as other flavourful Scottish locations). There are plenty of Scots in the cast too, although it’s the very English Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey, The Crown etc) who takes the lead role of DCI Carl Morck.But Morck not only doesn’t have a very English name, but is far from your ideal English gentleman with a Lady Mary on his arm. The series opens with a brutal incident in Read more ...
David Nice
Recent events have prompted the assertion – understandable in Ukraine – that the idea of the Russian soul is a nationalist myth. This production reminded me that it isn’t, if only by telling us of what we’ve lost: the majority of those great Russian singers and conductors who lit up previous stagings of Tchaikovsky’s dark masterpiece.Though Jack Furness’s period-conscious concept – no violations pushed too far as in Stefan Herheim's Royal Opera horror – works beautifully with Tom Piper’s endlessly resourceful designs, Lizzie Powell’s lighting and Lucy Burge’s quirky choreography, the musical Read more ...
Anthony Cecil
I think The Ballad of Wallis Island is the best British romcom since I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), which it closely resembles.In the earlier film, an unexpected love affair develops on a remote Scottish island that is cut off by stormy weather. The fictional Wallis Island is off the coast of Wales, not Scotland, yet director James Griffiths makes the same poetic use of landscape that characterises the Powell and Pressburger classic. Both movies are about love and nostalgia, but whereas the primary conflict of I Know Where I’m Going! is class, the corresponding fault line in The Ballad off Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pete Shelley’s departure from Buzzcocks felt abrupt. When he left the Manchester band which had been integral to British punk since 1976, the other members thought it was still a going concern. Shelley had reached a different conclusion.Buzzcocks played what turned out the be their final show on 23 January 1981. At this point, making a new album, their fourth, was on the table. Neither the band or the audience in Hamburg knew it was the last time the band would be seen on stage. A little over a month later, on 4 March, Shelley put his name to a letter dissolving the band. “Homosapien,” his Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“I can’t move my arms or legs, but apart from that I’m good to go.” Moth (Jason Isaacs) has to be pulled out of the tent in his sleeping bag by his wife Ray (Gillian Anderson). And this is only the second day of their 630-mile walk, split into two summers, along the south-west coastal path from Minehead to South Haven Point.Raynor Winn’s moving, witty account of their trek, which they embarked on after being made homeless, was a bestseller in 2018. Perhaps inevitably, the eponymous film, in spite of having Tony-award winning theatre director Marianne Elliott at the helm (War Horse, Angels in Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This charmingly eloquent semi-autobiographical show – which first played at the Bush Theatre in 2022 – tells the story of a girl whose life growing up in a council flat is transformed by the arrival of an upright piano. Lylah – like the show’s creator, Anoushka Lucas – is the daughter of an Anglo-Indian father and a French Cameroonian mother, and her subtle, often humorous, exploration of her racial identity becomes intertwined with who she is as a musician.Lucas has won several plaudits as an actor and singer in shows including Regent Park Open Air Theatre’s Jesus Christ Superstar and the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Director Ben Rivers is primarily an artist, and it shows. Every frame of Bogancloch is treated as a work of art and the viewer is given ample time to relish the beauty of the framing, lighting and composition. Many of the shots fall into traditional categories such as still life, landscape and portraiture and would work equally well as photographs.In fact, the whole film is structured as a series of episodes that are more like animated stills than narrative sequences. And it produces the sense of being in the continuous present – as in a painting or a photograph. It’s a perfect match for the Read more ...