Reviews
Jenny Gilbert
Mention Isadora Duncan and the best response you’re likely to get is “Wasn’t she that dancer who died when her scarf got caught in the wheels of a Bugatti?” The closing scene of the 1968 biopic starring Vanessa Redgrave seems to have blotted out everything Duncan actually achieved.This triple bill by the Viviana Durante Company attempts a correction by paying homage to this early 20th-century celebrity totem of female emancipation as the true founder of modern dance. Not only did her free-flowing, barefoot style pave the way for the artistically weightier innovations of the Ballets Russes and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Simon Brodkin is best known for his cheeky Cockney wideboy character Lee Nelson, and for pranking the famous – notably handing Theresa May her P45 at the Conservative Party conference in 2017, throwing Nazi-themed balls at Donald Trump when he visited his Scottish golf course in 2016, and, in 2015, storming Kanye West's Glastonbury set and showering then Fifa president Sepp Blatter with banknotes. But now in 100% Simon Brodkin, he is touring as himself for the first time.He starts with some gently mocking interaction with the front row, and then Brodkin tells us about his home life as the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Judging by her debut album, Malmö singer-songwriter Alice Boman’s frosted-glass musical aesthetic has the odd hint of Mazzy Star and draws from the sound world created for Twin Peaks – a similar outlook to Gothenburg’s El Perro del Mar. Dream On is not the full story though. Boman’s first record was released in 2013 and, since then, she has issued another EP and a few singles.And judging by the wide-ranging dip into her catalogue at London’s Union Chapel, she’s keen to stress Dream On isn’t the full story. While all-but one track from the album was performed – “Mississippi” was omitted – “ Read more ...
David Nice
When Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski first bounced on to the concert scene, he seemed part will-o-the-wisp, part jack-in-the-box, a real personality of coruscating brilliance. Time has passed, and deeper, more reflective qualities have emerged alongside the fireworks, an impression very much underlined by his intent in launching his latest CD with Prokofiev's Tales of an Old Grandmother - short, predominantly introspective miniatures which are difficult to place in a concert programme. Indeed, I'd not heard them in that context until last night, where their place at the start of an Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Italian journalist Roberto Saviano still lives in fear of his life 11 years after writing Gomorrah, which explores how criminal gangs use tax havens to launder money. “You make 100 million euros from trafficking cocaine or migrants,” he explains, “and you buy restaurants, hotels and houses legally, sell them to your offshore company then buy them back at a much higher price.” No-one else, it seems, has been willing to risk delving into the underlying causes of the housing crisis – until now, that is. Swedish director, Fredrik Gertten has achieved the almost impossible, making an Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The rage and bitterness surrounding the Brexit brouhaha have made it immune to comedy and satire, but perhaps change is in the wind. Channel 4’s bogus royal family is back after a two-year gap, charged (as an introductory voice-over explained) by Her Majesty’s government with cheering up the divided nation.The timing is exquisite – or, I suppose, horrific if you’re a member of the real-life royals – since the air is still echoing with the fall-out from Harry and Meghan’s great escape and Prince Andrew’s “interesting” private life. Andrew was played by Tim Wallers like an obnoxious fund Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The theatre gods rained down not fire and pestilence, but a 45-minute technical delay on opening night of this substantially revised musical – a stage adaptation of the 1998 DreamWorks animated movie. But nothing could entirely halt this juggernaut; fittingly, for a show that earnestly values persistence and the unstoppable power of the epic.The story remains essentially faithful to its Biblical source, following Moses (Luke Brady, pictured below with Christine Allado) – child of a Hebrew slave family – from his fortunate adoption by Queen Tuya (Debbie Kurup), who finds him floating Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Since Back in Time for Dinner in 2015, this BBC Two social history strand in which families travel into a recreated past to experience ways in which society, leisure and lifestyles have changed has proved a robust perennial. Its latest iteration, Back in Time for The Corner Shop, whisked us away to a Sheffield corner shop in 1897, where the local Ardern family threw themselves into the rigours of late-Victorian retailing with commendable joie de vivre.Sara Cox played presenter and sergeant-major, chivvying the Arderns along in their unfamiliar new roles, and filling in some factual history Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“Everybody lies," says property developer Tony to his PA and secret lover Natalie. “Even your mum probably.” And of course he’s not wrong.Sarah Williams’s drama, showing over four consecutive nights on ITV, is an easy-to-digest and deftly-wrought piece of work, using an unspecified accident which has left somebody in hospital – Williams has bent over backwards to avoid revealing the victim’s identity until the final episode – to prise open the secrets and lies of Vivien (Francesca Annis) and her family. Vivien, who's turning 70, has been living on the Sussex coast for the past 40 years, Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This concert represented the British leg of the NHK Symphony Orchestra’s European tour. Tokyo’s radio orchestra is Japan’s flagship ensemble, and they are fine advocates for the country’s thriving musical culture, the playing precise and the tone focused. Paavo Järvi is the orchestra’s Chief Conductor and a good fit for the orchestra’s sound. Järvi takes a similarly focused approach, expressive but never extrovert. He has a real feeling for drama as well, often driving climaxes furiously, while always relying on the orchestra’s unshakable unity. Despite his minimal gestures, he has a tendency Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
It’s common to see the term “vanity project” applied to self-produced shows by ballet stars, but Alina – the first such London venture by Alina Cojocaru – was quite the opposite of vain. If the opening item (a duo for violin and cello, with no dancing) was a mission statement, then this programme wasn’t about the 38-year-old Romanian at all: it was about the music and the people whose talents have nourished hers.Halvorsen’s Passacaglia, a fiendish 19th-century showpiece for strings, was delivered with throwaway panache by violinist Charlie Siem and cellist Margarita Balanas, whose spirited Read more ...
David Nice
Startlingly high levels of expression and focused fire made this rich concert worthy of the dedicatee who radiated those qualities, Jacqueline du Pré. Beyond even that, this Wigmore Hall special was an oddly synaesthesic experience – or maybe I'm just suggestible; at any rate Joanna MacGregor's full-blooded way with Frank Bridge's torrid late romanticism seemed to drip red, there was ethereal silver in the more other-worldly Shostakovich playing of the Gildas Quartet and gold from their viola player, Jenny Lewisohn, as well as from superlative cellist Adrian Brendel, in perfect synchronicity Read more ...