Reviews
Gary Naylor
It’s a greater accolade than a Nobel Prize for Literature – one’s very own adjective. There’s a select few: Shakespearean; Dickensian and Pinteresque. Add to that list, Wildean. That’s all the more remarkable in the light of Oscar Wilde’s personal ruin in the years leading up to his death, aged 46, ostracised from London, self-exiled in Paris. And that reputational recovery is no recent occurrence, no reclaiming of a martyred icon in these more enlightened times (though it is), but predates the remarkable social changes of the last two decades. Wilde’s rehabilitation rested solely on the Read more ...
Gary Naylor
That friend you have who hates musicals – probably male, probably straight, probably not seen one since The Sound of Music on BBC 1 after the Queen’s Speech in 1978 – well, don’t send them to Charing Cross Theatre for this show. But that other friend you have – enjoyed Hamilton, likes a bit of Sondheim, seen a couple of operas – do send them. They’re not guaranteed to like Stiletto, but they’ll find it interesting at worst and, whisper it because it's a new musical, they might actually thank you! We’re in 18th century Venice, pleasingly evoked by Ceri Calf's atmospheric set design and Anna Read more ...
Graham Fuller
“Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” The Aesop-ian maxim roughly applies to Jérémie Pastor (Félix Kysyl) in Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia. Though unemployed Toulouse baker Jérémie doesn’t acquire the business that was run by his deceased mentor Jean-Pierre, the film’s ambiguous ending suggests he might still share it with the widow, Martine (Catherine Frot). Unless or until the gendarmes come calling.Jérémie is first seen driving to Martine and Jean-Pierre’s village in rural Occitania – where he was raised and trained – in a protracted scene rendered eerily oppressive by the Read more ...
Robert Beale
It’s quite ironic that the Royal Northern College of Music should have invited, as director of this, Britten’s avowedly pacifist opera, Orpha Phelan – whose version of his Billy Budd for Opera North nearly 10 years ago contained one of the most thrilling battle scenes ever staged.And, in her presentation of Owen Wingrave, war is not merely talked about, but seen. That’s very much to the good, as Myfanwy Piper’s libretto makes the adaptation of Henry James’ story very talkative: until very near the end, you might say all the action is in the dialogue.Much can be made of the fact that the opera Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Motherhood is a high stress job. Ask any woman and they will tell you the same: sleepless nights, feeding problems and worry. Lots of worry. Lots and lots. Writer John Donnelly, who has also experienced the stresses of parenthood, devotes his new play, Apex Predator, to turning this everyday event into a vampire story.Staged at the Hampstead Theatre, the play is original and initially appealing, and stars Sophie Melville and Laura Whitmore in the main roles, but soon loses its gloss. It’s his first stage play for 12 years and, because I have liked his previous work such as The Pass and The Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Is the Royal Ballet a “Balanchine company”? The question was posed at a recent Insight evening to Patricia Neary, the tireless dancer who has helped keep the choreographer’s legacy intact since his death in 1983 and a living link with his teaching. Neary has been working with the RB as a coach, advisor and stager of Balanchine’s work for the past 57 years. “Oh yes!” was her emphatic answer.Neary, who didn’t even hang up her pointe shoes until she was 70, has now decided to spend more time with her husband in Los Angeles. In its new all-Balanchine triple bill, the company shows how thoroughly Read more ...
India Lewis
Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruin of Empire, the journalist Howard Amos’ first book, is a prescient and fascinating examination of the borderlands of a bellicose nation. Focusing on the Pskov region, which juts out into eastern Europe, his account sympathetically – but honestly – describes the lives of its remaining inhabitants; the area has steadily depopulated since the end of serfdom and the end of the Soviet period.A place that once offered employment and opportunity has become a backwater, not much more than a lonely borderland that supplies troops to the contentious Ukrainian Read more ...
Justine Elias
The typical Jason Statham movie character – muscular, resourceful, drily humorous – could probably carve an army into mincemeat using a few odds and ends nicked from the local Hobbycraft. In A Working Man, Statham’s second collaboration with writer-director David Ayer (The Beekeeper), the star defends the helpless with pickaxes and sledgehammers. And then he gets really violent.This time, Statham (Killer Elite, Ocean’s Eleven) portrays Levon (rhymes with “heaven”) Cade, an ex-SAS operator making a meagre living as a construction manager. Though the film’s graphic-novelish opening credits ( Read more ...
Robert Beale
The BBC Philharmonic took its Saturday night audience on a journey into French sonic luxuriance – in reverse order of historical formation, beginning with Duruflé, continuing with Chausson and ending with Saint-Saëns. It was conducted by Geoffrey Paterson and featured Dame Sarah Connolly as mezzo-soprano soloist, neither of them the artists originally announced, but 100 per cent good value as their substitutes. Finishing with the Third Symphony of Saint-Saëns – the “organ symphony”, which has a drawing power of its own for those who love to hear the noise that music can make – was the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The dramatic allure of families neck-deep in organised crime never seems to falter, and Stephen Butchard’s new series continues that great tradition in rambunctious style. Sean Bean (pictured below) plays Ronnie Phelan, paterfamilias of a Liverpool cocaine-importing operation, with Jack McMullen as his son Jamie. Julie Graham steps up to the plate as Ronnie’s wife, Elaine.However, it’s inherent in the theme that blood will be thicker than water. The man who has helped Ronnie build his Scouse drug empire is Michael Kavanagh, played with watchful, steely-eyed menace by James Nelson-Joyce. But Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A pizzicato violin opens Song Over Støv. Gradually, other instruments arrive: bowed violin, a fluttering flute, pattering percussion, an ominous double bass. They merge. The climax is furious, intensely rhythmic. Suddenly, it is over.“Straumen frobi” – which translates from Norwegian as The Current Passing By – sets the scene for five more equally dynamic, just-as feverish tracks. Each is as much about the structured interplay of instruments as it is impact. At times – especially during “I natt” (Tonight) and “Trø” (Step) – proceedings evoke the folk music/rock hybrid characterised by Sweden’ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy collects 10 tracks which were not originally released (a bonus seven-inch with early copies of the LP takes it to 12 tracks). The first band heard are Birmingham’s Heavyboots. They are followed by Band Of Mental Breakdown (also known as B.O.M.B.), Macbeth Periscope, Agatha’s Moment, Jessica’s Theme, Greenfly, Read more ...