Reviews
Rachel Halliburton
To watch Mahan Esfahani play the harpsichord is to watch a philosopher at work. While there’s often playfulness and shimmering levity you can feel the thought behind each note. The Iranian-American’s passion for the harpsichord began when he was nine – the moment he heard it on a cassette his uncle gave to him when he was visiting Iran, he knew he wanted to spend his life devoted to the instrument. In a Guardian interview he once described it as the “posh, pretty boy in prison. He’s gonna get beaten on” – a witty yet defensive quote that accounts for an approach that’s as radical as it’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s something exhilarating about seeing bands right at the very, very dawn of their careers. Will they be headlining the Houston Astrodome in five years’ time or working in chip shops? It’s all to play for. But it’s right now that counts. Of course, it only feels that way if they’re any good. When they are, it peps the spirit.This evening is a showcase by Brighton label Goo Records. Only a couple of years old, they’ve built a reputation by firing out solely singles and EPs, career kick-starting releases for an array of guitar bands. Their best-known act is light-hearted, sportswear- Read more ...
Robert Beale
A cello concerto received its UK premiere in Manchester last night – almost 100 years after it was written. It’s by Maria Herz, a German-Jewish composer who had to leave her native land in the 1930s and whose work has remained almost unknown until quite recently.Raphaela Gromes has championed this concerto, giving its German premiere last year, and she brought it to Britain with the Hallé and Alpesh Chauhan (main picture).It’s a one-movement work in three sections, with modest orchestral forces required, and harmonic analysts might say it’s of its time – displaying a mastery of chromatic Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
They stopped making the BBC’s original Bergerac in 1991, so you can hardly complain that this reboot is premature. John Nettles became closely identified with the titular detective Jim Bergerac before he decamped to Midsomer, murder capital of the world, and has declared himself impressed with Damien Molony’s performance as the born-again sleuth (pictured below, Molony picks up the baton from Nettles).So, we’re back among the picturesque architecture, broad sandy beaches and French-sounding place names of Jersey, where we find Chief Inspector Bergerac in a troubled frame of mind.His wife Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The war in Gaza has been going since 7 October 2023 – that’s about 15 months. But it’s strangely absent from British stages. Of course, it’s a divisive issue, a difficult issue, a painful issue – but isn’t that what contemporary theatre should be about? Instead, we prefer to stage bellicose horrors in plays by ancient Greek tragedians, or mention Palestine in Shakespeare plays, but really…Now at last, after being staged in Edinburgh last year, Syrian-Palestinian theatre-maker Khawla Ibraheem’s A Knock on the Roof comes to London, to the Royal Court, having already been to the Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Shelly (Pamela Anderson) is a dancer. She’s been with Le Razzle Dazzle, an outdated Las Vegas show that’s full of “breasts, rhinestones and joy”, in her words, for 30 years. And now it’s closing. Where can she go, at the age of 57?The third feature film from director Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis Ford, niece of Sofia; Palo Alto, Mainstream) is an homage to those who struggle to make a living as Vegas show-girls and casino waitresses. The locations, with their desolate flyovers, freeways and neon glitz are atmospheric, but Kate Gersten's script doesn't light up the lives of these girls Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Why is it so hard to write a decent play about Bach? Maybe, in part, because there are no words that can express anything as eloquently as his music did – about life and death, pain and transcendence, wretchedness or rapture at the simplest aspects of existence. So much of what he represented was distilled into that music – and what we are left with biographically is the workaholism, the curmudgeonliness, the rows with figures of authority.Nina Raine wrestled with this only semi-successfully in her 2021 play, Bach & Sons, and now Oliver Cotton has taken on the challenge by focusing on Read more ...
David Nice
Dublin theatregoers have been inundated with Irish family gatherings concealing secrets or half-buried sorrows, mixing “bog gothic” with very real horrors. Clearly they’re willing to try again with Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, because its run has just been extended. The vanishings familiar to Butterworth’s wife Laura Donnelly, whose uncle was among the disappeared, still resonate, as a programme article by Sandra Peake, CEO of WAVE Trauma Centre, reinforces.In the London premiere (vividly reviewed on theartsdesk by Aleks Sierz), Donnelly played Caitlin Carney, who along with son Oisin has Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston just gets better and better, both as singer and as actor. Last night’s recital at Temple Church had an unusual and wide-ranging programme – consisting of a first half hopping through the centuries, followed by a complete performance of Schumann’s “Kerner-Lieder” cycle.Charlston and Sholto Kynoch had originally devised this programme for last autumn’s Oxford International Song Festival. It certainly looked very appealing on paper, with all kinds of music to discover. And so it proved.The first half worked brilliantly as a sequence, with all kinds of Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Last night was the first time I had heard the 12 Ensemble, a string group currently Artist-in-Residence at the Wigmore Hall, and I was very impressed, both by the standard of the playing and the enterprising programming. This gave regular audience-members a little of what they’re used to (a chunk of Brahms) and a decent portion of what they’re not.The first half featured a sequence of pieces which in some way dealt with music of the past, starting with an arrangement of Bach by cellist Max Ruisi (one of the co-founders of 12 Ensemble). Komm, süsser Tod was played with poise and warmth by the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
On walking into Mikalene Thomas’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery my first reaction was “get me out of here”. To someone brought up on the paired down, less-is-more aesthetic of minimalism her giant, rhinestone-encrusted portraits are like a kick in the solar plexus – much too big and bright to stomach. Could I be expected to even consider accepting these gaudy monstrosities as art?A brash assault on the senses, they seemed to be daring me to turn away. Then came two installations – recreations of the living room in the terraced house in Camden, New Jersey where the artist grew up in the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Microtonic comes into focus on its third track, “Infinity Peaking.” Album opener “Goit,” featuring a guest vocal by Working Men’s Club’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant, is doomy post-Balearic impressionism with spoken lyrics seemingly about the loss of self. Next, the distant-sounding rave-shoegazing hybrid “John on the Ceiling.” “Infinity Peaking” is the point of coalescence; where beats-bedded, drifting electronica is suited to the comedown experience.After this, bdrmm’s third album – their second for Mogwai’s Rock Action label – settles into developing the marriage of Seefeel-esque post-rock Read more ...