Reviews
Nick Hasted
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining ended in ice, Stephen King’s in fire which consumed the Overlook Hotel. King’s frightening, emotionally rich novel was written by an alcoholic about an alcoholic, Jack Torrance, and his suffering family. Kubrick’s film was about the Overlook, a chilly, impressive thing of obsessive patterns and iconic imagery. No wonder he left the hotel standing. Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of King’s sequel, Doctor Sleep, is very much a warm-blooded King film, though set in Kubrick’s familiar world. Thoughtfully merging both classic sources allows him a last check-in at the Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“He was dying slowly. We just made it quick.” This is sharp-faced, menacing Max (Mark Bonnar: Catastrophe, Unforgotten, Line of Duty) to his sensitive brother Jake (Jamie Sives: Chernobyl, Game of Thrones, The James Plays). Jake is driving Max’s car on their way back from a wedding in Fife – Max is beside him, swigging champagne - and accidentally runs into and kills an old man in an Edinburgh suburb. Well, the old guy did have terminal pancreatic cancer, so that makes it OK, doesn’t it?Jake’s all for calling the cops or alerting a neighbour. But no way, says Max, unless he wants "to be Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Even the most ardent Bardophile has to admit that most of the time the Fool doesn’t shine in a Shakespeare production. Lamentable wordplay combined with philosophy limper than a dead capon means that with a few honourable exceptions, his interludes feel nasty, a tad brutish, and just not short enough. Yet in this RSC transfer to the Barbican, Sandy Grierson’s coruscatingly witty Touchstone, complete with bald patch, straggly hair, sequin vest, and tight tartan trousers, steals almost every scene in which he appears. In an evening filled with gentle comedy, there is a raw anger to his humour Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This series examines murders in the USA “with elements of love and passion as well as prejudice”, and the second season opened (on BBC One) with "Killing in the Classroom", the story of the fatal stabbing of New York school student Matthew McCree by bisexual teenager Abel Cedeno. It was a case bristling with overtones of racism and homophobia, but this skilfully-made documentary also threw light on the arcane workings of the US justice system.The fatal 2017 incident stemmed from persistent homophobic bullying of Cedeno, a solitary and apparently mild-mannered boy who preferred practising as a Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Little Simz exits through the ladies. It's telling, since her set at EartH is the capstone to a tour that, by her own admission, has left her rinsed, broken friendships, torn her away from her family and led her to question her career. And yet, as she wends past the women in the queue that snakes down the corridor, who whoop and thank her for the show, she's obviously buzzing. And rightly so. From start to finish, the show drips energy. Opening with a growling roll of bassy thunder, she almost breaks the sound system when she bursts on set with Boss. Her entrance alone lends credence to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“I think we all dream of simplifying our lives and reconnecting with nature,” reckons Ben Fogle, and since this was the start of the tenth series of this show, he must have struck a chord with viewers. His first subject was 24-year-old Italian woman Annalisa Vitale, who’d dropped out of university in Italy despite her obvious academic potential and set out to build a life of self-reliance. “People say I wasted my brain, but I think I saved my brain,” she reflected.Her adventures began in Spain, then she set off across Europe with little more than an old bicycle and a ukelele. For a time she Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Memory involves places, people, things and words, especially words. This abstract proposition is given knotty life in Welsh playwright Ed Thomas's extraordinary new play, On Bear Ridge, which comes to the Royal Court after opening at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff last month. Over a compellingly Beckettian 85 minutes, conceived and staged as a rare example of metaphysical theatre, he shows how the decay of language eats away at memory, identity and life. Yes, it's a grim story of loss in a metaphorically resonant absurdist fable. And one in which Rhys Ifans performs a masterclass in Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Artist George Stubbs liked horses. The MK Gallery’s exhibition “all done from Nature” will try to convince you that he also cared about people. He did, to an extent; the commissions came that way. But about half way through the exhibition, the diminutive Study for Three Hunters and Two Grooms Waiting in a Stable-Yard, 1765-70, gives pause for thought. The detailed study depicts a horse with pensive eyes and toned flanks. One back hoof is elegantly raised, as if ready for parade. Its ears are perkily alert. It is a clever creature. Yet where bridle and saddle should be is empty space. Its Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mieczysław Weinberg – where to begin? The composer died in obscurity in 1996, but his music has enjoyed a huge surge in popularity over the last ten years, culminating in this year’s global celebrations for the centenary of his birth. His music is lyrical and deeply expressive, but audiences can be forgiven for not knowing quite what to make of him. He was immensely prolific, and his works are diverse, yet a distinctive voice runs throughout them.Weinberg was a Polish Jew who spent most of his life in Moscow, and, depending where we look, we find Polish, Jewish and Russian influences. He was Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Considered logically, releasing an album as heavy on guest features as Charli XCX’s newest should present particular logistical problems when it comes to recreating the tracks on tour. Charli’s approach is the opposite: no gimmicks or trickery, just minimalist techno hedonism powered by nothing but strobe lights and sheer charisma.Charli XCX is the full package: MC, singer and her own hype man; number one, to butcher the title of her 2017 mixtape, in a hall full of angels on hand to contribute additional vocals when needed. Latest album Charli, released just last month, is both a party record Read more ...
David Nice
The Apostles is a depressing work, mostly in a good way. Elgar's one good aspirational theme of mystic chordal progressions is easily outnumbered by a phantasmal parade of dying falls, hauntingly shaped and orchestrated. After The Dream of Gerontius, this ostensibly more clear-cut oratorio has less sense of form; it's fragmentary or modern, according to taste. I doubt, even so, if a better argument could be made for it than that from last night's team and its keen guide, Martyn Brabbins – a more flexible shaper, let's be honest, than the admirable champion of the work he was replacing, Mark Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Sunn O))) must have been on stage at The Crossing for a fair few minutes before anyone from the capacity audience realised they were there. Bathed in a thick fog of dry ice, initially all that could be seen were the power-on lights of the band’s impressive mountain of amplifiers and speakers. However, as the first chord was struck and the red and blue stage lights ignited, Stephen O’Malley, Greg Anderson and their crew made themselves very much known with a burst of volume to wake the dead.Dressed in their trademark black cowls and with guitars held aloft to greet the crowd, Sunn O))) Read more ...