Reviews
Gavin Dixon
A new commission, a Romantic tone poem and a choral spectacular – standard fare for the First Night of the Proms. Traditionally, the First Night sets out the themes for the season ahead, but the rationale behind much of this programme was paper-thin. Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass was included because Henry Wood had conducted it, part of a series featuring pieces Wood introduced to the UK. Dvořák’s The Golden Spinning Wheel was played because Henry Wood had not conducted it, a Proms first performance “reflecting Wood’s fondness for expanding the repertoire”. So the Czech theme turned out to be a Read more ...
Graham Fuller
In Tell It to the Bees, sex is aberrant unless it’s conducted by a straight married couple. Since Annabel Jankel’s low-key drama is set in a grim Scottish mill town in 1952, you can add “white” to that dictum. We’re in the land of John Knox here and the suffocating mood of repression is summed up in the taut face of the factory forewoman Pam (the great Kate Dickie), who tells the machinist Lydia (Holliday Grainger), her Mancunian sister-in-law, “What was my brother thinking of, bringing home a wild one like you?”Based on the semi-autobiographical third novel by Fiona Shaw, Tell It to the Bees Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Die Zauberflöte rarely attracts the plain cooks of the operatic world. Mozart’s farewell opera chucks so many highly-spiced ingredients into its outlandish pot – pantomime and parable, burlesque and ritual – that many productions opt for one show-off recipe that promises to unify all its flavours into a single, spectacular dish. Seldom though, can a high-concept Magic Flute have served up its menu with such delirious dedication to a Big Idea as this, the Glyndebourne Festival’s first version for more than a decade. The Franco-Canadian design-and-direction duo of (André) Barbe & ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
One of the most memorable moments in Ron Howard’s documentary about Luciano Pavarotti is one of its earliest scenes. It’s a chunk of amateur video shot when Pavarotti visited the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, a splendid Belle Epoque structure in the midst of the Amazonian jungle. In front of a handful of curious onlookers, Pavarotti climbs onstage and sings Tosti’s "A Vuchella", a favourite piece of his idol Enrico Caruso, who also used to sing at the Teatro Amazonas. It’s a lovely tribute from one superstar-tenor to another from an earlier generation.Modern technology and media meant Pavarotti Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The City of London is an ecological disaster. Around Bank, Mansion House and Cannon Street there’s scarcely a green leaf to be seen. Glass, steel, concrete and tarmac create an environment that excludes plant life, birds and insects and is detrimental to human health.Everyone in the Square Mile seems to be ignoring the twin disasters of air pollution and climate change – everyone, that is, except Bloomberg. Over the summer, they are hosting Beuy’s Acorns, an installation of 52 saplings grown by artists Ackroyd & Harvey (Pictured below right). They harvested the acorns from trees planted Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
French director Agnès Varda looks back over a cinematic career of seven decades in this a richly moving film farewell, finished not long before her death at the end of March, aged 90. It’s structured around a series of masterclasses in which she takes audiences through her work, joined in conversation by some of her collaborators (plentiful screen clips present many more). Varda defines the three words important to her in making films as “inspiration, creation, sharing”, and Varda by Agnès is testament to her special talent in that last category.It’s a selective survey, from her Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The cynicism of this film’s existence squeezes all the feeling from it. It approaches cherished childhood memories of the original The Lion King (1994) with a view to remonetising them. Technological advances apart, there’s no reason at all for this Lion King.The plot proceeds precisely as before, with lion cub Simba (the voice of Donald Glover once grown) pottering happily around the Pride Lands, an ecologically balanced Eden ruled by benign despot Mufasa (the returning James Earl Jones). Simba’s uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), pictured below, here ravaged and spectrally white, again plots Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Sculpture is as much a part of Yorkshire as cricket and a decent cup of tea, with the “sculpture triangle”, comprising four prestigious museums and galleries, feeling almost as well-established as the county’s famed rhubarb triangle. Now the Hepworth Wakefield and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park have collaborated with the Leeds Art Gallery and the Henry Moore Institute next door to launch a sculpture festival.Yorkshire Sculpture International, which runs until 29 September, showcases work new and old against the backdrop of the county’s considerable sculptural heritage, with Barbara Hepworth and Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This gothic yarn set in 1850s Snowdonia stars Maxine Peake as Elen. She’s left alone with two young daughters to manage an isolated farm when her husband goes off to war. Mysterious omens – a sheep’s heart filled with nails festoons the farm door – and ghostly shadows in the night all conspire to alarm her older daughter. Gwen (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) begins to doubt that her strict mother has the ability to keep her children safe, especially when Elen starts to have seizures. There’s no help from neighbours or the church and it becomes clear that the local slate mine owner is Read more ...
Katie Colombus
I never quite know where I stand with with jazz. The endless, drifting circular loops of sound, subversive grooves and syncopated rhythms are like having the same conversation over and over, with slightly different turns of phrase and emphasis on different points.Brazilian psychedelia band Boogarins’ interpretation of this intimate interchange saunters from soft whistling and the warm murmur of trancey beats, through the casual discourse of bluesy guitar harmonies and synthy chatter, punctuated by harder rhythmic rock.Their singing in Portuguese distances me even further from a full grasp on Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It’s hard to convey in an age of equal marriage and gender fluidity the impact that k.d. lang’s Ingénue had when it was released in 1992. The album, 10 tracks that tell of the pain and pleasure of love and longing, was a huge hit with a generation of gay men and women, closeted or out, who felt it spoke directly to them. Straight people were welcome to the party too, of course; broken hearts don't discriminate.Ingénue remains her finest work, the first, she says, that she wrought from her personal experience rather than simply musical expression. Her previous albums had been influenced Read more ...
aleks.sierz
One of the glories of contemporary London theatre is its revivals of classic American drama. Year after year, audiences are able to revisit and enjoy the great landmarks of postwar American playwriting from greats such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard and David Mamet (recently joined by the likes of Lynn Nottage). Now the latest addition to the West End's glory days is Williams's 1961 masterpiece, The Night of the Iguana, in a great production whose starry cast includes Clive Owen, Lia Williams and Breaking Bad's Anna Gunn.The story is set in 1940, on the veranda of the Costa Read more ...