Reviews
Thomas H. Green
As every social space in Brighton once again transforms into a mire of self-important music biz sorts loudly bellowing about “waterfalling on Spotify”, it’s also a great time for those who relish gigs by new talent from all over the world. For three days (four, if you count warm-up Wednesday), every nook and cranny has half-hour showcases running from lunchtime until close. And on top of that are the freebie Alternative Escape fringe events.This writer starts in Chalk, arguably Brighton's best venue, an approximately 800-capacity space, open and airy, with great sightlines and an acceptable Read more ...
David Nice
It was a daring idea to mark Ravel’s 150th birthday year with a single concert packing in all his works for solo piano. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet knows them by heart, has bags of charisma and energy, so why not? I could give more than one reason, but the main problem was that while Bavouzet perfectly embodied Scarbo, the monster-Puck of Gaspard de la nuit, and other nocturnal flitters, he seemed careless with Undine and her watery companions, of which there were many.So much felt too loud - does Bavouzet's choice of a Yamaha piano, Richter's favourite, have anything to do with it? - and rushed. No Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Good One is a generation-and-gender gap drama that mostly unfolds during a weekend hiking and camping trip in the Catskills Forest Preserve in upstate New York. A putative indie classic, writer-director India Donaldson’s psychologically acute feature debut focuses on a self-contained, observant young woman, Sam (Lily Collias), whose skepticism about hard-wired male attitudes grows exponentially over the weekend.Sam lives with her gruff sixtyish dad Chris (James LeGros), his second wife, and a much younger stepbrother in a Brooklyn brownstone. On the eve of the hike with Chris and his buddy, Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s hard to say who is going to enjoy E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea. Admirers of the modernist designer-architect will be frustrated by how little of her other work is actually visible on screen while fans of feminist biopics might well be underwhelmed by the film’s languid pace and arty flourishes. It’s also a little puzzling that a major incident in Gray's life – the controversy around whether Le Corbusier jealously added frescoes to the all-white villa that Gray had designed on the Côte d'Azur in 1929 – has been covered fairly recently in the drama The Price of Desire Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In Emmanuel Courcol’s drama The Marching Band (En Fanfare in French, and also released as My Brother's Band), a struggling community band in a mining town in northern French has fallen on hard times. Elements of déjà vu, perhaps?Certainly, if you're from Northern England. But rather than the romance of Mark Herman’s Brassed Off (1996), The Marching Band focuses on the relationship between two brothers (main picture).One, from the high end of metropolitan culture, is orchestral conductor Thibaut Désormeaux (Benjamin Lavernhe). The other, from the hard slog of life in Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Lucy Farrell, one quarter of the brilliant, award-winning Anglo-Scots band Furrow Collective, and a solo artist whose stunning debut album, We Are Only Sound, was released in 2023, divides her time between the UK – she’s a native of Kent – and Prince Edward Island, a musically rich parcel of land off Canada’s eastern seaboard. The island is home to the other half of this sublime folk-acoustic double bill, Juno Award-winning songwriter Catherine MacLellan.They’re playing small venues across the UK till the end of the merrie month of May – the Blaxhall Sessions in Suffolk and the Hungate Church Read more ...
Veronica Lee
From the creative team that brought you The Play That Goes Wrong in 2012 (and assorted sequels) comes this spy caper. As ever with Mischief productions, their latest work is a lot of fun and pays its dues to the great age of British farce (and pantomime too) with clever wordplay and physical comedy as things go increasingly awry.We’re in London in 1961, at the height of the Cold War; various British, American and Russian spies are gathered in the Piccadilly Hotel as MI6 has learned a top secret file is about to be handed over to the Soviets by a double agent.CIA operatives Lance (Dave Hearn) Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
There is so much that is right about Jonathan Kent’s new production of House of Games – the casting, the staging, the direction. But the flaw it can’t overcome is that the 1987 David Mamet screenplay on which Richard Bean based this stage version in 2010 has been transformed from a vicious psychologically tough caper-movie into an almost jaunty puzzle-play, its sharp teeth removed.The setting is still Mamet’s regular beat, Chicago, slightly modernised: there are mobile phones here, though they don’t play a strategic part in moving the plot along. There are fleeting references to the senator Read more ...
David Nice
William Byrd, Arnold Schoenberg and their respective acolytes go cheek by jowl, crash into one another, soothe, infuriate and shine in their very different ways This is all in a typical programme of pianist, conductor, composer and all-round pioneer Karim Said, and last night in the studio of Leighton House, it nearly all worked (when it didn’t, that was the nature of the beast, not the pianist).Lord Leighton may not have been a great artist – he was a state figure who had a grand funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral in the same year as the much more original William Morris was buried under simple Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
There was a wonderful festal spirit at the Wigmore Hall last night, as the vocal ensemble Stile Antico ran through a Greatest Hits selection in celebration of their 20th anniversary, in front of a packed and enthusiastic audience. The 12-strong group still boasts four founder members, but this was swelled to 10 for the final item, as a swarm of alumni joined in a beautiful rendition of Gibbons’ The Silver Swan.Stile Antico specialises in music of the 16th century, in all its variety – from Byrd to Palestrina – sung with rich-hued warmth in the vocal sound, animation and vigour in the rhythms Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
According to PUP lead singer Stefan Babcock, the Toronto foursome practiced together a grand total of twice before embarking on their current UK and European tour.Given the band’s well-known habit for disagreements and teetering on the edge of imploding, that might have been a wise decision. It didn’t affect the show itself, for while the group’s history is littered with chaos, this was a lively but controlled display. There was little fuss or frills here, instead around 20 tracks being hammered through with a consistent bounce, inside SWG3’s pillar strewn concrete bunker of a Glasgow Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Zoe Lyons knows her audience; as a few shoutouts confirmed, many of them are long-time fans, and have had lives with similar highs and lows along the way, and she delivers stories about her life that reflect theirs too. And so it proves with her latest touring show, Werewolf – which I saw in the cavernous surrounds of Earth Hackney – as she talks about finding contentment in middle age.Lyons said that a while back she had sort of decided not to tour again, but she has a mortgage to pay, so here she is, and we’re glad she changed her mind. In her warm, conversational style, she declares Read more ...