Reviews
Markie Robson-Scott
“You do like to have your cake and eat it, Vity. So many cakes, so many,” laments Harold Nicholson (Rupert Penry-Jones) to his wife Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) as she embarks on an affair with Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki).The Bloomsberries have been parodied so often – I kept thinking here that I was watching a version of Radio 4’s Gloomsbury, with Miriam Margolyes as Vera Sackcloth-Vest – that it’s hard to take director Chanya Button’s interpretation seriously.It constantly verges on pastiche, with everyone rolling their r's in a verry 1920s upper-class way and Virginia, when Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Time hasn't necessarily been kind to this slow-aborning West End transfer of a show first seen (and lauded) in its 2015 debut in Leicester and then again two years later for a summer run at the Menier Chocolate Factory. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 has now reached the West End, and the obvious question is who is this musical version of the ever-popular Sue Townsend books for? It's difficult to imagine overly many of the Adrian Moles of today (or even their parents) latching on to jokes about Dallas or Elizabeth Taylor, and the retrograde sexual politics – "shut your Read more ...
Guy Oddy
There can’t be many bands who have been around (on and off) for almost 40 years and who choose to play the whole of their latest album as their live set. That kind of thing is more often reserved for 10- or 20-year anniversary tours. No one could accuse Al Jourgensen and Ministry (or any of his many bands, for that matter) from having ever taken the easy route at any point in their career though. Fortunately for a heaving O2 Institute, Uncle Al is still not playing “the game” today.To celebrate this year’s Fourth of July, Ministry played two sets on the Birmingham leg of their first UK tour Read more ...
stephen.walsh
The famous ambiguity of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is whether the ghosts that take possession of the two children are real or merely figments of the young Governess’s imagination. Britten’s opera resolves this unequivocally in favour of their reality: they appear alone together, and generally materialise so solidly that it never occurs to you to doubt their real existence. But now Louisa Muller, in her vivid new production for Garsington, casts a fresh and intriguing light on this question. She presents the Governess, the housekeeper Mrs Grose, and the ghostly Miss Jessel as three Read more ...
caspar.gomez
As ever theartsdesk’s Glastonbury report arrives after all other media coverage. Despite management pressure Caspar Gomez refuses earlier deadlines. He told Editorial, “The press tent is like an office, a place of work, full of laptops and coffee. Who needs that?” His annual saga doesn’t attempt to compete with Tweeted micro-reviews or ever-available BBC iPlayer festival highlights. It takes a winding road, explores the scenery, the musical-chemical highs and body-worn lows, capturing in fuller form than anywhere else a most singular plunge into Glastonbury 2019.THURSDAY 27th JUNEIt’s been Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Who would have thought that Ari Aster could top the satanic delights of Hereditary? Yet with Midsommar, a psychedelic twist on folk horror, he has. Aster abandons the supernatural to show that it’s not things that go bump in the night that scare us, it’s other people.Think of your worst romantic relationship, the one that churned you up inside and left you a sobbing mess for months. This is the territory that Aster mines in his latest work. Florence Pugh plays Dani, a post-grad student whose life is split between worrying about her suicidal, bipolar sister, and her relationship with Christian Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Crowned queen of the percussive heel and the trouser suit, Sara Baras has the audience on its feet long before the final number of her show Sombras (Shadows). The Spanish superstar is a familiar presence at Sadler’s Wells, having fronted its annual two-week flamenco festival several times before. She’s a natural headliner with her big, glossy theatrics. Her current offering, though, is a thing of deep contrasts: light and dark, sound and silence, conviviality and yes, loneliness. There are moments when she almost has you believe it’s just you and her in the room.Baras’s signature dance over Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Welcome to A Midsummer Night’s Dream as carnival – a blazing-coloured, hot-rhythmed, kick-ass take in which Oberon appears at one point as a blinged-up Elizabeth I and Puck exerts his powers as a flash-mob. Last month the glitter-ball hedonism of Nicholas Hytner’s gender-fluid Dream, which opened at The Bridge, felt like an impossible act to follow, but this riotous production by Sean Holmes at Shakespeare's Globe shows that the Battle of the Dreams is on.The Latin American vibe that pervades the romantic madness in the woods is given a sinister twist through the decision to introduce Theseus Read more ...
David Nice
Benjamin Britten's musical mystery tour is still bringing young communities together to work with professionals at the highest level 61 years on from its premiere in a Suffolk church, and Lyndsey Turner's sweet production at Stratford must have been as much fun to be in as any. But Britten also had special concerns about communication, speaking eloquently about a "magic triangle" of three equal points - the work, the performers and the audience. Confine much of Noye's Fludde behind a proscenium arch in an intimate theatre, and you immediately introduce the element of Them and Us. Place the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Janelle Monae says her show is all about making memories. She tells the crowd: “I hope that I can become a memory for you that you access when you’re feeling down – a memory that’s rooted in love and freedom.”Themes of #loveislove, courage to live your reality even if outside of the norm, and speaking truth to power are loud and proud in Dirty Computer – the album Janelle is touring Europe, with the London leg coming hot on the heels of a Glastonbury appearance.Her energy isn’t diminished as she takes to the stage in variations of a monochrome unitard, PVC cap and floor length coat, Read more ...
Tom Baily
Should the Ritz catch up with modernity? This question is posed and immediately answered with another question: Does it need to? Not really, say the staff, clients and celebrity guests that populate this bubbly, formulaic and unashamed celebration of what is, rightly, a gorgeous and historic venue. Sticking tight to tradition and celebrating it – with the help of some very famous talking heads – is what is on offer in ITV's latest show. But viewers in search of history, intrigue, scandal, or an insight that slides even an inch beneath surface description will not find it in this overtly Read more ...
Matt Wolf
An apocalyptic title proves somewhat of a red herring for a slight if intriguing play that returns the dream team behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to their erstwhile stomping ground at the Royal Court. Set across 20 years in the Newbury kitchen of a socialist family most of whom on this evidence cannot cook, Jack Thorne's play traces a familial and political bequest that takes us from the arrival of Tony Blair as PM through to the spring of 2017 and a lone reference in passing to "Brexit Britain". But quite what the author and his longtime director, John Tiffany, want us to make of a Read more ...