Reviews
Nick Hasted
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) wouldn’t have any luck at all. Being an Iraq special forces veteran jailed for protecting his wife in a bar fight seems wretched karma enough. Released as an undercover informant on the Polish mob for FBI handler Wilcox (Rosamund Pike), his bid to secure real freedom with his family is then kiboshed when a similarly clandestine New York cop is killed by his gangster partner.In return for such unwanted heat, both Polish kingpin the General (Eugene Lipinski) and Wilcox insist that Koslow re-enter his brutally corrupt alma mater, Bale Hill Read more ...
David Nice
Can we go back to an older Glyndebourne-at-the-Proms vintage, where the chosen production was merely sketched out with variations suited to the venue, and performed in whatever evening dress might be appropriate? Certainly one wishes that director-designer duo André Barbe and Renaud Doucet’s ingenious wardrobe for their reductive Edwardian-hotel, chefs-and-chambermaids Magic Flute could have been left down in Sussex. This would have given the serious stretches of the piece the simple gravity and musical focus Mozart deserves when he goes deep.Unfortunately this was also an exposure of what Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Neil Armfield’s resonant, turbulent production of Kate Grenville’s classic Australian novel The Secret River sing out from the stage of the Olivier like an epic, with its conflicts, culture clashes, and quest for new territories. But there are no heroes in this tale of sound and fury, which details a tragedy of mutual incomprehension as an eighteenth-century petty London criminal fights to assert dominance over the Aboriginals of New South Wales.The play – which has been adapted by Andrew Bovell – gained an ardent following when it opened in Australia in 2013. This year its triumphant Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Is there any challenge that television producers haven't filmed celebrities doing? They won't be happy until they've followed a bunch of them snowboarding down an Alp while baking a cake, conducting an orchestra and researching their family history. And if it involves a little sob followed by a group hug, bonus!But I can't be cynical about Sink or Swim (Channel 4) because it's in aid of the charity Strand Up to Cancer. The programme's USP is that 11 celebrities – using the term loosely – who are all weak or non-swimmers are being trained to do a sponsored relay swim across the Channel next Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Done well, a one-room exhibition can be the very best sort, a small selection of paintings allowing the focused exploration of a single topic without the diluting effect of multiple rooms and objects. In this respect, Artists in Amsterdam rather misses its mark, providing neither the detail nor the scholarly insight we have come to expect from the National Gallery’s Room One exhibitions.Even so, Dulwich Picture Gallery’s display is not without its merits, and it uses eight works from its extensive collection of Dutch paintings, plus one loan, to sketch an evocative, if slight impression of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There was a time when a new series of The Affair (Sky Atlantic) would cause the heart to quicken; now, not so much. Actually that sounds like the course of most extramarital affairs – an initial rush to spend time with the object of your affection, only for the desire to dwindle over time. Yet the opening episode (of 11) of the fifth and final series promised that this would be an interesting hook-up as there's an intriguing new thread with the introduction of the adult version of a character we last saw as a child in a previous series.In the opening episode things were in a state of flux in Read more ...
Owen Richards
As days get shorter and the sun tucks itself behind a blanket of clouds, Whitney return with the bittersweet sound of summer ending. Forever Turned Around is the long-awaited follow up to 2016’s Light Upon the Lake, and the band have lost none of their melodic magic. It is old city soul brought to the hills and forests of the American frontier, and a much welcome break in these trying times.Opener and lead single “Giving Up” shows the band have opted for evolution over revolution. Those trademark falsetto vocals are still there, the horn-led breakdown and uplifting chorus are very on brand. Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There’s something truly sad and dispiriting about listening to an artist trash their back catalogue and absolutely totally ruin their greatest song, especially when that song has acquired anthemic status and been chosen to be preserved by the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry. Bob Dylan does it, of course, but that’s intentional. Martha Reeves clearly doesn’t realise how terrible she sounds and no one has had the courage to tell her. What are sisters for?Her younger sisters Lois and Delphine, who currently comprise The Vandellas, perhaps have too much of a vested interest Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Manchester International Piano Competition produced three outstanding performances over the two evenings of its finals: the winner of the first prize was Ilia Lomtatidze, from Georgia, with second prize awarded jointly to the Italian and French pianists Luca Grianti and Oscar Colliar.This was the sixth event of its kind, its full name the Manchester International Concerto Competition for Young Pianists. Note the words "Concerto" and "Young" there: it’s not just another piano solo tournament. The maximum age for entrants is 22, and they all have to be capable of playing a concerto – which Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In the late 1950s, a photo technician from Salford suddenly became “the most famous teenager in Britain”. Shelagh Delaney was 19 when she sent the script of A Taste of Honey to the radical director Joan Littlewood. Within a matter of weeks, in May 1958, Theatre Royal Stratford East had staged it – sensationally, to a welcome that mixed bouquets and brickbats. The fearless youngster from the cosmopolitan slum neighbourhood of Ordsall had already begun “to change the way working-class women are treated and represented in Britain”. With its two generations of single mothers, its relaxed Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Apparently, Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer Doug Clifford’s snare drum broke during the first song of their set at Woodstock Festival. On the new double album Live at Woodstock, it’s impossible to detect this happening. As “Born on the Bayou” progresses, the band’s forward motion is relentless and their dedication to the groove is undiminished during this and the remainder of a blistering, paint-peeling set. This percussion hiccup and an allied perception that it was a sub-standard show prevented the band’s leader John Fogerty from allowing CCR to be included in the subsequent live album Read more ...
India Lewis
Karl Marlantes’s Deep River is an all-American novel. And why should it not be? Marlantes is an all-American author. He grew up in small-town Oregon, attended Yale (and Oxford), fought and was heavily awarded as a Marine in Vietnam, then settled down to convert his experiences into the well-received Matterhorn and What It Is Like To Go To War. In Deep River, he returns to his childhood to tell the story of his Finnish heritage, loosely basing it on The Kalevala, a collection of tales gathered together in the 19th century into one epic poem by Elias Lönnrot. This explanation, which comes at Read more ...