Reviews
Marina Vaizey
The National Gallery is on a roll to expand ever further our understanding of western art, alternating blockbusters dedicated to familiar and bankable stars, with selections of work by lesser known figures from across the centuries. Last year for example we had the Finnish Gallen-Kallela, the American Thomas Cole and the Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto.Now it is the turn of the Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla, (1863-1923) billed in 1908 as the "World’s Greatest Living Painter" for an exhibition at London’s Grafton Galleries, the first and last time he was to be shown in Britain. His reception in Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Paper is traditionally the medium though which artists think. Stray thoughts and experiments can be quickly tried out, pushed further or jettisoned. There are no penalties for starting something which goes wrong or transforms into something else because material is cheap, expendable. Erasure or high finish are equally likely, dead ends and new directions begin in the same place.Who’s Afraid of Drawing is the second exhibition of around 60 works from the Ramo Collection, which itself comprises some 600 works on paper by 20th century Italian artists. Many of the artists included in the Read more ...
Owen Richards
The Earth’s mightiest defenders are back in a triumphant climax, 11 years in the making. Despite a three hour runtime and an overstuffed preceding chapter, the Russo Brothers pull off the near-impossible by creating a wholly satisfying final chapter, and possibly the best film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.When we last saw the Avengers, all hope was lost. Half of all life in the universe was turned to dust. Tony Stark and Nebula were adrift on a distant planet. Earth’s remaining survivors were left to contemplate their failures. How they each deal with this speaks volumes about their Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The joint is jumpin’ at Southwark Playhouse, now hosting an irresistible Fats Waller-inspired, Manhattan-set musical revue (a co-production with Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, where it opened last month). Though originating in the Seventies, this sizzling show benefits from a fresh infusion of talent, with actor Tyrone Huntley making his directorial debut, and Strictly Come Dancing pro Oti Mabuse making hers as a musical theatre choreographer.Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby, Jr. supply the book, but this early jukebox musical is blessedly free of a story awkwardly pegged to existing Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Hey guys, it’s Kayla, back with another video. So, the topic of today’s video is being yourself.” Kayla Day (the wonderful Elsie Fisher, nominated for a Golden Globe and also heard as the voice of Agnes in Despicable Me) is in her last week of eighth grade in upstate New York, compounding the horror of being 13 years old by making self-help YouTube videos in her bedroom. “As always, make sure to share and subscribe to my channel. Gucci!” she signs off chirpily, with Enya’s Orinoco Flow as surprisingly effective background music. But is anyone watching?This directorial debut from stand-up Read more ...
Mitten wir im Leben sind, De Keersmaeker, Queyras, Rosas, Sadler's Wells review - Bach-worthy genius
David Nice
All Bach is dance, a teacher once told me. The justifiable exaggeration switched on a light; leaping to the Brandenburg Concertos followed. This great work of kinetic art is of a different order. Choreographer and performer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker represents the pure but vibrant mastery of the Cello Suites in the way that the soul moves with them, responsive to every hyper-dance form, key and modulation. Using only five dancers including herself from her Rosas company on the bare Sadler's Wells stage in equal partnership with the magisterial playing of Jean-Guihen Queyras, she balances the Read more ...
Ellie Porter
When you’re off to Islington’s beautiful Assembly Hall for an evening of slinky French bossa nova, it’s something of a surprise to find the Gallic groovers preceded by a droll Brummie singer who brings to mind a cross between Billy Bragg and Richard Hawley. But it turns out that Matthew Edwards, who boldly steps out on stage armed only with an acoustic guitar and a dry wit, is the perfect way to begin tonight’s evening. Edwards’ set – featuring everything from a song about "being murdered by a French actress" to an unexpected spot of yodelling – goes down well with the crowd, and then it’s Read more ...
Katherine Waters
It was in the early 2000s in a tiny, gritty bar that I first saw Rodrigo y Gabriela live. Camden was less pretty then – a look was close to a glare and there were more spikes and kohl – the nineties were that much closer. I was right at the front, pressed up against a rib-height stage, alarmingly close to the percussive thrum taking place inches above my head. The atmosphere was heady, their acoustic performance electric. Their hands moved like fire, catching the area’s thrash sensibility – I’d not heard anything like it.Over a decade on and the two are playing the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Mark Thomas issues a health warning for Check-Up: Our NHS at 70 at Battersea Arts Centre – “This show contains swearing, a video of an operation on a stomach and a description of being in A&E when a patient dies.” Indeed it does, but it also contains a heartfelt love letter to the health service Thomas was born in and, as a lifelong socialist, hopes to die in. But as he points to creeping commercialisation, what are the chances of that being so?The show, a highly entertaining 75 minutes, is based on a series of interviews that Thomas conducted with leading experts in Read more ...
David Nice
On one level, it's about Biblically informed good and evil at sea, in both the literal and the metaphorical sense. On another, the love that dared not speak its name when Britten and E M Forster adapted Hermann Melville's novella is either repressed or (putatively) liberated. The conflicts can make for lacerating music theatre, as they did in Orpha Phelan's production for Opera North. Deborah Warner's ideas are there, but yet confused, to the Royal Opera House audience at least, even after runs in Madrid and Rome. In the bows of the ship, Ivor Bolton's conducting is mostly solid, no more, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Suede finish “Sabotage”. It’s a mid-paced, elegant number set off by swirling, circling central guitar. Frontman Brett Anderson hangs from his microphone stand on the left apron of the stage to deliver it, with the lights down low. Afterwards he paces back to his bandmates, body taut, hair a-flop. He tells the audience he’s been involved in a long ongoing experiment; “standing in front of VOX AC30 amps for 30 years.” The resulting problem, he adds in a rising shout, “is that I can’t hear you.”It’s a showbiz shot, dryly delivered, but it works. He keeps coming back to this, demanding a louder Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
With the knife crime epidemic seemingly raging out of control, and the government at its clueless worst as it stumbles around hoping for a quick fix, here was a look at a possible solution. Via her Track Academy charity, former triple-jumper and sports journalist Connie Henry aims to use sport as a force for education, personal development and social cohesion.“One of the things that sport does is it gives you a family” said Daley Thompson, a double Olympic gold medallist and one of the celebrity supporters who have pitched in to help boost Henry’s efforts. Daley’s comment struck a nerve, Read more ...