Reviews
India Lewis
John Grant’s entry onto the stage was unobtrusive, appropriate for a set-up that consisted of just a grand piano and an electronic keyboard (with accompanying keyboardist). He began with similarly unadorned songs, the ballads that peppered the start and the end of his set. Despite it being a departure from his more orchestrated recorded sound, a strong hint of the space-opera remained, coaxed out by synths and allusive lyrics. His songs are deliciously naughty, a sophisticated, rich sound that is counterbalanced by swear words and a satisfying cynicism. There were times when this wasn’t Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
A creepy lighthouse on a remote island, a blistering storm, a mermaid languishing on the shore and two fabulously bewhiskered actors chewing up the scenery like there’s no tomorrow. The Lighthouse feels like it’s been washed up in a bottle, a film from another time with a story sprung from ghost stories or nightmares.The American writer/director Robert Eggers really knows how to create mystery and a particular sense of unease. He follows his outstanding debut, the pre-Salem horror film The Witch, with another deeply atmospheric concoction, which doesn’t really feel like horror Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
There’s a palpable rage to Melina Matsoukas’ first feature film Queen & Slim, starring Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya and newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith. Cast in the mould of Bonnie and Clyde, it’s a film that has you clinging to the arms of your seat from the first fifteen-minutes. In the opening scene, we learn that Turner-Smith’s character - called Queen for the majority of the film - is a defence lawyer who has recently lost her client to the death penalty. She’s on a Tinder date with Slim (Kaluuya), to distract herself. On the way home in Slim’s car they get pulled over by a trigger Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz reminds us once again of the unfathomable horror of the Holocaust. The revival of anti-semitism in our own country and elsewhere is why it’s worth telling these terrible stories again and again.Belsen: Our Story (BBC Two) gathered together a small group of survivors – all looking remarkably healthy, considering their age and their experiences – to knit together the saga of the Belsen-Bergen camp in northern Germany. Originally an internment camp for prisoners of war, it was only later redesignated a concentration camp, and became steadily Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Your sweet tooth can get you into trouble. Lots of trouble. In this revival of Lucy Prebble's provocative debut, first staged at the Royal Court in 2003, the metaphor of sugar, and of the powerful attractions of this drug-like substance – bad for you, but providing an instant hit – is explored through a disturbing story about paedophilia and the internet. Since writing this play, Prebble has gone on to create large-scale contemporary classics such as Enron and A Very Expensive Poison, but, with the exception of The Effect, none of her later plays match her first one for sheer emotional Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Journalist Sunny Hundal has a long track record as a writer and blogger concerned with issues of race, politics and ethnicity. He’s also the brother of the late Jagraj Singh, an influential preacher who encouraged a dramatic upsurge of interest in the Sikh faith among young people, not least through his hugely successful YouTube channel. The determinedly non-religious Sunny used to argue bitterly with his brother, so much so that they didn’t speak to each other for years.Perhaps they would eventually have come to a reconciliation had Jagrav not died of cancer (aged 38) in 2017, but Sunny will Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Changing the gender of the title character “highlights the way in which women still operate in a world designed by and for men,” argues Chris Bush, whose reimagining of Marlowe’s play premieres at the Lyric ahead of a UK tour. It’s certainly a compelling idea – albeit one already explored in previous productions like Pauline Randall’s 2018 gender-swapped Faustus at the Globe – but the resulting piece, though impassioned, is unfortunately rather a muddle.Johanna Faustus (Jodie McNee) is the epitome of powerless: a low-born, 17th-century woman whose apothecary father (Barnaby Power) crushes her Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
When I reviewed the Philharmonia’s Weimar season last year I expressed a hope to hear more Hindemith performed in London. When, also last year, I reviewed chamber music at Conway Hall I looked forward to my next visit. So a Conway Hall programme including Hindemith’s Clarinet Quartet was like a magnet. And I wasn’t disappointed by the Hindemith, or by Messiaen’s extraordinary Quartet for the End of Time that made up the second half.Conway Hall is an enterprising venue, as much community centre as concert hall, with a long tradition of Sunday evening chamber music. The attendance was Read more ...
David Nice
"Citizen. European. Pianist," declares Russian-born, Berlin-based Igor Levit on the front page of his website. One should add, since he wouldn't, Mensch and master of giants. High-level human integrity seems a given when great pianists essay epics: certainly true of Elisabeth Leonskaja and Imogen Cooper tackling respective sonata trilogies by Beethoven and Schubert, or András Schiff in Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier. Last night was on that level. Questions may linger over the nature of Shostakovich's many-headed hydra of a homage to Bach, but none about Levit's expressive intent and execution Read more ...
Owen Richards
What’s the appeal of cinema? It can transport us to fantasy lands, or open our eyes to new perspectives. But one aspect that’s less discussed is how it brings people together. Going to the cinema is a social stimulus, a shared experience that sparks discussions and forges friendships. And as shown in Sudanese documentary Talking About Trees, its absence leaves a hole in the community.We follow the Sudanese Film Group (SFG), a collection of former filmmakers, as they try to reopen the Revolution Cinema in the city of Omdurman. It’s more than a hobby for them, it’s a calling. Since the military Read more ...
Robert Beale
Kurt Weill’s “Broadway opera” – his own preferred description – is an extraordinary and brilliant piece of work. Its music ranges from the seriously dramatic to fun numbers like the "Ice Cream Sextet" and the jitterbug dance song “Moon Faced, Starry Eyed”; there’s a lot of spoken-dialogue-with-music, as well as solos, duets and all manner of ensembles; and the story is both comic and tragic.Written in 1947, it pictures life in a New York tenement – and on the street outside – on two sweltering summer days and nights. The climax comes when a jealous husband murders his wife. As tragedy Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Given Slipknot’s studied image as arch misanthropes, with their horror show costumes, aggressive posturing and frightening masks designed to put the wind up Middle America and everyone else for that matter, their imposing singer Corey Taylor spent an unexpected amount of time between songs on the Arena Birmingham’s stage this weekend preaching a gospel of sticking together in these trying times and of encouraging the band’s fans, the Maggots, to watch each other’s backs. In fact, he seemed particularly keen to make it clear that Slipknot are “not just dicks in masks” with loud guitars and a Read more ...