Reviews
David Nice
Early 2026 was always going to trump late 2025 in one respect: total clarity in a much-anticipated concert performance of Janáček's teeming masterpiece over Katie Mitchell's disastrously overloaded Royal Opera production. And it resplendently did, with Marlis Petersen free to capture every facet of the 337-year-old heroine seeking regeneration, only to decide that life beyond the normal human span isn't worth the candle. Simon Rattle predictably got the London Symphony Orchestra to burn for him in this strangest and most innovative of scores.Quibbles first, though. If Mitchell made a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
There’s a slight “Sympathy For the Devil” tone to the opening seconds of “Pendulum Swing”, the first track on the US country adjacent stylist and former Grammy nominee Courtney Marie Andrews’ ninth studio album – the descending piano figure, the circling percussion. As the song opens out, it develops into a dark-light exercise in contrasts, along the lines of the more muted moments of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Ambiance set, the ensuing nine tracks evince a similar restraint, where a low-key vibe is punctuated by flashes of gospel-esque drama. A lot of Valentine, Andrews' first album on Read more ...
David Nice
To the great Weill interpreters she summoned at the start of her First person for theartsdesk, from Cathy Berberian to Tom Waits, can now be added mezzo-soprano Katie Bray's contribution. The hour's worth of songs from the German, French and American eras she presented in the perfect Fidelio Cafe setting, the wintry night outside and cosiness within evoking Berlin or Vienna haunts, didn't include everything that's on her new CD, but it all made perfect sense, and saved the most emotional until last.Bray is a superb communicator, and a generous sharer with her co-artists. The programme fulfils Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Lawlessness and lack of accountability seem, tragically, on the verge of becoming a new American norm, so what better time to re-consider High Noon, the classic 1952 Western that forefronts issues of moral rectitude. Will Kane, the marshal who stays on in his tight-knit New Mexico community to square off against an outlaw whom he sentenced to hanging five years before, possesses a moral propriety akin to the likes of Atticus Finch. And look how often To Kill A Mockingbird lands on stage. On the face of it, you can see the sense in adapting Fred Zinnemann's four-time Oscar-winner to the Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Composer Zoë Martlew’s album (Album Z) launch in the surround-sound environment of Hall 2 at Kings Place thrived on a theatricality rare outside the world of rock music and clubs. A wondrously energetic person, overflowing with a generosity and capacity for heartfelt relationship, Martlew thrives on high drama, as a performer as well as a person, with an almost child-like joy in making music that’s irresistibly contagious.There was dramatic lighting, dry ice and earth-shaking electronics. In a deftly-constructed programme of new and older works, she created an enjoyable – at times hilarious Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As one of the characters tells us: “There are two sides to every story… someone is always lying.” This telly-isation of Alice Feeney’s source novel, created by a quartet of screenwriters and directed by William Oldroyd and Anja Marquardt, picks up that idea and runs with it energetically. It pitches us into a vision of an American rural south which is plagued with deceit, guilt, simmering resentment and murderous intent dating back decades. No-one is entirely innocent, and at least one person is incredibly guilty.The plot orbits around a group of female classmates who grew up in the small Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Maybe it was the cold weather. Maybe it was the disparate list of comics on the bill. Maybe it was a host (Fatiha El-Ghorri) who said that she might be a bit rusty this soon into the new year. But whatever it was, the gala preview for the Leicester Comedy Festival, which runs next month, didn’t quite fire on all cylinders.But let’s start with the positives. Hull standup Louise Atkinson (LCF’s comedian of the year in 2025) bossed it in her 10-minute slot, opening with a gag that was a callback to something El-Ghorri had said, and even improving on it. Confident and lively, she got the audience Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong is the debut album by the London-based duo Woo. Originally issued on the Sunshine Series imprint in May 1982, it was subsequently picked up for a 1987 US release by the LA-based Independent Project Records label. After this, Woo's second album, It's Cosy Inside, came out in 1989 on Independent Project Records. There was no UK version of the follow-up album back then; a US reissue on Drag City followed in 2012.When Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong appeared in the UK in 1982, NME’s review said “How strange that in a year so packed Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Never mind the singing, Roderick Williams could have been a great TV presenter or even stand-up, on the evidence of his spoken introduction at the Wigmore Hall last night. It was the best pre-concert speech I’ve heard for a long time – relaxed, witty, authoritative and engaging – and this is not damning with faint praise, as the recital that followed was completely delightful. The fact it also featured Williams as composer was further evidence that nature does not hand out talent equitably. The programme, of Williams’s devising, saw him revisit and update an idea from about 10 years ago Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Just weeks after the theatrical version of the cult film Paranormal Activity successfully recreated the original’s nail-shredding fear, A Ghost in Your Ear offers its own distinctive route to transcendental terror. Where Paranormal Activity – directed by Punchdrunk’s Felix Barrett – leans heavily on superb stage illusions, A Ghost in Your Ear, as the title suggests, largely channels its chill factor through soundwaves. It was only going to be a matter of time till a theatre maker brought together a ghost story and binaural sound effects. Both have enjoyed increasing popularity in Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Lyle Kessler’s 1983 three-hander has embedded itself in the American repertory, attracting a Tony nomination and star casting. Here it was graced with an award-winning turn onstage from Albert Finney, who later starred in a film version. But is it more than an actors’ play?The little Jermyn Street stage brings its simmering tensions straight to your seat, as brothers Treat (Chris Walley) and Philip (Fred Woodley Evans) clash at their Philadelphia row-house. Treat, a self-styled tough guy, is a petty thief who preys on hapless pedestrians, bringing home his booty – watches, cash, jewellery – Read more ...
James Saynor
When Hamlet the Dane talked about “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”, it was typical of the way that Shakespeare generalised. The writer didn’t let you infer too much about himself. So when he specified one or two of the thousand shocks in the same speech (“To be, or not to be”), they involved rather impersonal, evasive things like “the law’s delay” and “the insolence of office”. In this, his most famous soliloquy, Shakespeare remained all things to everyone – his “universal” quality that made his literary name while eternally frustrating biographers.This new Shakespeare Read more ...