Reviews
Tom Birchenough
If ever there was a “play for today”, it’s surely this. Nina Raine’s 2011 A&E drama follows hospital staff – doctors senior and junior, surgeons, registrars, consultants, nurses – as they confront, individually and collectively, the stress of a routine that is rarely less than rushed, often simply frantic. Raine undertook considerable research for the piece, its portrayal of life within the NHS acclaimed at the time as authentic by those inside the system, while the cuts that austerity has brought over the last decade can only have intensified the tribulations depicted here.What it’s like Read more ...
David Nice
A brutal Greek tragedy and a rococo Viennese comedy, both filtered through the eyes and ears of 20th century genius: what a feast on consecutive nights from the Metropolitan Opera's recent archive. There's been real thought behind the wealth of programming in the company's attempts to keep the world happy for free during lockdown, including a whole Wagner week. These two of the top masterpieces by Wagner's natural successor - "Richard the Third", as Strauss was dubbed, because there could be no second - both reminded us of what worked and what didn't when Robert Carsen's sort-of-1920s Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Amazon had already been declared the world’s most valuable public company before COVID-19 struck, but under the current stay-indoors regime, its online retailing and streaming entertainment services have been given an astronomical extra boost. The now-ubiquitous Amazon Prime delivery boxes would probably stretch to the moon and back if laid end to end.In the USA, surveys have shown Amazon to be more trusted than the government, the police and even Tom Hanks, but is it all too good to be true? In this Supershoppers special (Channel 4), presenters Helen Skelton and Sabrina Grant set out to find Read more ...
Veronica Lee
“There are places in India where it's safer to be a cow than a woman” is a seemingly innocuous statement, but for Indian comic Aditi Mittal it was a dangerous one to make in a comedy show. It led to her arrest after a man complained that it was offensive to Hindus (and possibly cows, who knows).Yet Mother of Invention, an energetic and engaging hour about where Mittal's feminism comes from, isn't a political show per se. It's silly and often raucous – she's upfront about her sexual life – but the low value placed on women in Indian society is an ever present underscore, and all the more Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The “relocation in search of a new life” theme has become a dependable TV staple, from A New Life in the Sun to Relocation, Relocation and Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild, but this Channel 5 series by Kate Humble has been more entertaining than most. Perhaps it’s because we captive, locked-down TV viewers are yearning to roam free in wide-open spaces.Anyway, having moved from Chiswick to the Wye Valley, Humble (an expert on sustainable bee-keeping) knows all about swapping commuting and urban sprawl for the rural life. This third episode (out of six) was a hoot.Humble’s protagonists were Read more ...
caspar.gomez
What times. They cancelled Glastonbury. Festival season 2020 disappeared. Then certain potions and compounds associated with festivaling ran dry. Well, the latter exist, of course. There’s a fellow over the road who’s still selling talcum powder and stinking chemo-skunk from his porch. The reprobates who gather there on sunny days clearly think “social distancing” is an alternate term for a restraining order which, on this one lucky occasion, doesn’t apply to them. So how about a mini-music fest right here? With all the quality quivver fizz and nom noms an insurmountable car journey away, I’m Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The latest Sadler’s Wells digital offering is 2019’s The Thread, a luminous collaboration between choreographer Russell Maliphant and Oscar-winning composer Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner) for the Athens-based production company Lavris. It’s a striking, contemporary take on Greek folk dance and classical mythology, with a series of abstract episodes forming the 75-minute work. Fragmented, and yet, as the title suggests, subtly woven together – like a collection of disparate beads strung onto one piece of string.Maliphant’s company of 18 young Greek dancers features six performers Read more ...
Genevieve Curtis
It starts with an almighty boom. Without warning, a breeze-block wall that spans the width of the stage collapses into billowing clouds of dust. As the air clears, we see a stage strewn with rubble, and picking her way determinedly through it blonde Julie Shanahan, shod – as are all Pina Bausch's women – in high heels, absurdly impractical for walking, for dancing, or even for standing still. After dumping a bag of dirt over her head, she demands of the encircling men to be kissed and loved, but she also demands to have tomatoes thrown at her (“at my stomach!”).While the full visceral impact Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The out-of-control missile on the cover is emblematic. The actual takeoff in question is the flight Brian Christinzio was forced to board in 2015 following his deportation from the UK. What came next is the album title's "shortly after": an enforced return to the US from his adopted hometown, Manchester, was followed by the sudden death of his father, and the concomitant resurfacing of issues with drugs and mental health. Some light came when, through his lineage, Christinzio aka BC Camplight was subsequently able to get an Italian passport and return to Europe.The worst of times, though, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Seven Lies is the debut novel of Elizabeth Kay, who under another name works as a commissioning editor in publishing. For how long will she stay in her day job when her pseudonymous moonlighting has already reaped vast rewards? Her thriller emerges to a drumroll. It has been sold to 25 territories, The Bookseller reports a seven-figure deal, while the TV rights attracted multiple bidders, and there are already plenty of plaudits on Goodreads from influencers vouchsafed advance e-copies.Meanwhile, according to the blurbs that fill the pages where glowing reviews should sit in the paperback Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
One of the masters of both mystery and thriller, Don Winslow’s latest volume is a reading bonanza: a collection of six crime-focused short novels (‘novellas’ feels too fancy for a writer so unpretentious) that riffs off the genre with technical virtuosity, building to a staggering immersion in the possibilities of the form. It’s a hugely enjoyable crash course in the chameleon-like possibilities of crime; a whizz of a read.Winslow is a writer with extraordinary range. He is best known for his epic trilogy on the Mexican drugs war, twenty years in the making, that he concluded this year. The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
How Mitch Ryder is seen depends on particular perspectives. The Detroit blue-eyed soul belter racked up a string of US hits on 45 in 1966 and 1967. He made many albums, became an oldies radio staple and a perennial live draw. In the UK though he was small beer and his only sniff at the charts was with “Jenny Take A Ride”, which brushed the outside edge of the Top 30 in early 1966.However, one section of Britain’s music-loving public was keenly attuned to his take on soul. Ryder’s May 1966 single “Break Out” was initially played in the late Sixties at Manchester’s Twisted Wheel, and then Read more ...