Reviews
alexandra.coghlan
“Satan come to me!” The Devil doesn’t so much appear in David McVicar’s Faust as reveal himself to have always been there. We discover him – travelling trunk and brandy glass to hand, lazy smile on his lips – considering the interior of designer Charles Edwards’ magnificent church in Gounod’s own Second Empire Paris. And why not? This, after all, is his playground, not the rutting crowds of the Cabaret l’Enfer, the riotous drinkers, brawlers and hypocrites in the streets, or – in the screw-turning final reveal – the audience seated in the opera house itself: followers already all of his cause Read more ...
Matt Wolf
How do you make Bernard Shaw sear the stage anew? You can trim the text, as the director Dominic Cooke has, bringing this prolix writer's 1893 play in under the two-hour mark, no interval. And you can introduce a non-speaking ensemble of women in period bloomers and the like as a silent commentary on the depredations indicated in the text. Best of all, perhaps, is to cast as the brothel-keeper, Kitty Warren, and her Cambridge-educated scold of a daughter, Vivie, the actual mother-daughter pairing of Imelda Staunton and the stage legend's own daughter, the splendid Bessie Carter, who was Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
There is a dark, spectral quality to this compassionate film about Southeast Asian migrant workers in rural Taiwan. At the centre of this story is Oom, played with quiet stoicism by Wanlop Rungkumjad, who is one of many Thai, Cambodian and Myanmar nationals who have entered Taiwan illegally to find care work in its remote mountainous regions. The group of mainly Thai migrant workers we follow have the bad fortune of working for Hsing, a capricious boss who promises a pay day that never comes. Oom slowly becomes Hsing’s right-hand man which invariably strains solidarity among the migrants Read more ...
Robert Beale
Manchester Camerata spent eight years performing and recording a complete edition of Mozart’s piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist, together with conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, and inevitably there was the question: what next?Their next step has been the four horn concertos, and their soloist is the enthusiastic and polished Martin Owen. As with the piano concertos, these are not period performances – everyone plays on modern instruments – but they are historically informed, and the dynamics and sound qualities of a chamber orchestra are often an ear-opener to the nature of the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s not what he says, it’s the way he says it. Few filmmakers have bent the term “auteur” to their own ends more boldly than Wes Anderson, whose arresting visual style, oblique wit and skill in picking actors who can mould themselves to the unique demands of Wes-world is surely unequalled.You might argue that The Phoenician Scheme is little more than fanciful nonsense – I might be tempted to do so myself – but once on board you’ll want to stick around for the ride, even if much of it is barely comprehensible. It’s 1950, and the story revolves around Zsa-zsa Korda, a maverick tycoon who has Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not only because of its title. An early scene brings a nostalgic recap of highlights from the series’ history (which stretches back to 1996), with a voice-over from Angela Bassett’s President Sloane (pictured below) pleading with Ethan Hunt to return to save the world one more time. Comeback roles for M:I veterans Henry Czerny (as Kittridge) and Rolf Saxon – reprising his role of William Donloe from the first M:I film – reinforce the sense of a circle being closed Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV detective series, the spotlight has now landed on Canterbury. Code of Silence frequently inserts a dramatic aerial shot of the city, its streets radiating out from the towering ecclesiastical landmark at its centre, to remind us where we are.It’s an eerily empty version of Canterbury, its streets untroubled by tourists and traffic. Our sparky heroine, Alison (Rose Ayling-Ellis), zips around it on her bike; motoring up to London for a night out seems to be standard. At the heart of the story, though, is a real live Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
A society ruled by hysteria. Lurid lies that carry more currency than reality. There’s no shortage of reasons that Arthur Miller’s 1953 drama about witchcraft and revenge resonates so strongly today.In an article in the New Yorker he described how he wrote the play as an “act of desperation” that was “motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals”. Back then, the paralysis was in response to the tyranny of McCarthyism – now it’s the result of more complex forces that many of us are still trying to decode.Ola Ince’s blistering, humane production paints the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Pixies might just be the ultimate Radio 6 Dad band. They’ve been around (on-and-off) for around 40 years; they’ve got a fine back catalogue of slightly weird, guitar-driven scuzzy rock music and they have absolutely no pretentions to being flash at all.However, while Black Francis and his crew pulled in plenty of their core fan base into Birmingham’s O2 Academy this week, it was also pleasing to see plenty of young men and women who couldn’t have even been born when Pixies temporarily decided to knock things on the head and go their separate ways in the early 1990s. It was also clear that Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major opera companies, it’s left to concert halls and country houses to fill the void. There’s a full-length treat ahead this summer with Rameau’s opéra-ballet Les Indes Galantes at Hampshire’s Grange Festival, but first Temple Music served up an amuse-bouche from Christian Curnyn and his Early Opera Company.Before there was George Bernard Shaw (or My Fair Lady, for that matter) there was Rameau’s take on the myth of Pygmalion – the artist so in love with his own creation that she comes to life. The composer’s one-act opera is the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter. The Fifth Step, though, is a gentler beast whose humour ends with a simple visual gag. Maybe because this is more personally sensitive territory?Ireland sets the piece in an AA meeting place, somewhere he got to know well in his early twenties in Glasgow. As props, there are just a few folding chairs and a refreshments table with paper cups. The sides of the performing space are raised, turning it into a kind of arena. There, a succession of bouts takes place Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two established favourites from big names of the 20th century plus a new-to-me piece by a forgotten figure worthy of re-discovery.And the LSO under Susanna Mälkki didn’t disappoint in any regard: this was a great night in the Barbican hall. I came across the black American composer Julia Perry (1924-1979) a few years ago, but this was my first chance to hear her music live. There are a few black and women composers getting performed these days who, I fear, Read more ...