Reviews
Bernard Hughes
The first visual impression of Monday’s Wigmore Hall song recital was of the marked height difference between Irish soprano Ailish Tynan and the willowy baritone Benjamin Appl. But as they warmed to their task, their voices, which initially seemed an unlikely pairing, grew on me, whether in solo or duet numbers. Appl has an unforced and warm sound and is capable of sudden switches of tone and emotion that are very effective. Tynan’s is a more intense voice, animated in fast music, but always with a complete control of vowel sounds and a varied vibrato.The concert, part of the Wigmore’s “Sense Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Joshua Redman's Still Dreaming Quartet is a project surrounded by an abundance of facts, context and backstories. Jazz folk really like that stuff. If fans can’t get enough of all the interconnections and the minutiae, the truth is that a concert stands or falls by what actually happens in the moment, whether it actually works or doesn't. And in this Barbican set, the first of a short European tour, Redman, cornetist Ron Miles, bassist Scott Colley and Brian Blade at the drums really did deliver. These are four players whose immediacy of response, virtuosity, ability to raise the temperature Read more ...
David Nice
Ripeness is sometimes all. 80-year-old Martin Sherman's recent play, receiving its UK premiere at canny Park Theatre, says more about gay history in 100 selective minutes than The Inheritance managed in six and a half hours. True, it's not aiming at the visionary: Sherman knows that's best left to Larry Kramer, recalled as prophet and patriarch in AIDS-ravaged New York, and to Tony Kushner's Angels in America. But with three fine actors deftly directed by Sean Mathias, Gently Down the Stream – taking its name from the "Row, row, row" roundel the main character's wise old saviour remembers Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The arc of Daniil Trifonov’s reputation has soared and then, to some ears, stalled in a familiar modern way. Russian Wunderkind pianist bags a sackful of competition trophies (Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky prizes; Gramophone Awards). Early recitals and recordings display stupendous technique allied to audacious, beyond-his-years interpretation. Hype shoots off the scale. The prodigy from Nizhny Novgorod (born 1991!) is the new Richter, Rubinstein, Argerich und so weiter… Then come the iffy PR-driven choices; the unwisely stretched repertoire; the odd duff gig. The jury, having garlanded the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Against the grimmest of backdrops, generosity and even grace can be possible. That's the eternally uplifting message of Come From Away, the surprise Broadway musical hit about the community that was taking place north of the US/Canada border even as a New York felled by 9/11 continued to burn. Cynics may scoff (and have) at the feelgood factor to a show that some have been tempted to dismiss as merely a weightier Mamma Mia! But that's to miss the point entirely of the musical's canny portrait of a ready and unselfconscious empathy, which transcends the specific trauma from which the piece Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Sheeps, the sketch comedy threesome, had never really gone away but when they performed Live and Loud Selfie Sex Harry Potter at the Edinburgh Fringe last year after a four-year absence, it was called a comeback. More a welcome reunion, as its members – Liam Williams, Daran Johnson and Alastair Roberts – had been busy doing solo projects.The show, which they have brought to the Soho Theatre for a short run, is in the same vein as their previous work – original and intelligent sketch comedy with a touch of edginess and the surreal.It’s an insightful exploration of long-lasting Read more ...
Heather Neill
Remembering meeting Harley Granville Barker when casting him as Marchbanks in Candida, Shaw described the 23-year-old as, "altogether the most distinguished and incomparably the most cultivated person whom circumstances had driven into the theatre at that time." He judged his performance as the romantic poet "perfect". At just this point in his career, Granville Barker was writing Agnes Colander, subtitled "An Attempt at Life", a typescript of which was only rediscovered a few years ago by two Granville Barker enthusiasts, the American playwright Richard Nelson and the critic Colin Chambers. Read more ...
mark.kidel
Back in 2017, The Foo Fighters did a surprise pre-Glastonbury gig at Frome’s Cheese & Grain, a rather soulless shed near the equally soulless Westway Shopping Centre. So much for Frome being the heart of a new alternative Britain, almost a parallel universe with the only state-funded Steiner school in the country. The all-purpose venue is better known for programming a string of covers bands, the bi-monthly Vegan Market and the Seed Swap and Potato Day. The place was packed on Sunday night for a gig by Lau, the much-touted avant-folk band from Scotland.Kris Drever (guitar and vocals), Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
As journalists and critics were enjoying the unseasonably balmy weather in Berlin at the 69th Film Festival, all were wondering – where are all the good films? Surely outgoing festival director Dieter Kosslick would want to conclude his 18-year tenure by going out on a bang? Apparently not.Berlin has never had the glitzy attraction of Cannes or the Oscar-hungry titles of Venice and Toronto. Still, journalists and critics have flocked to the German capital each year. This is because Berlin is a festival where you expect to find challenging, demanding, and revitalising cinema. Cinema that gets Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s 1945 and World War Two is nearly over. Somewhere in England, Fiona Symonds (“Feef” to her friends) is training to be a spy and be dropped behind enemy lines. Her training involves such amusements as being woken in the night by having a bucket of water chucked over her, then being interrogated by two fake German officers.But the end of the war in Europe brings Feef’s dreams of covert derring-do to a sudden halt. Wrapped in the arms of her American lover Peter McCormick (Matt Lauria), she wistfully laments that she now won’t be able to parachute into Germany and blow up bridges. Perhaps Read more ...
David Nice
It seems an almost indecent luxury to have heard two top mezzos in just over a week with so much to express, backed up by the perfect technique and instrument with which to do so. Georgian Anita Rachvelishvili with Pappano and the Royal Opera Orchestra the Friday before last only had to hold the spell through a Rachmaninov sequence in the middle of an all-Russian concert. For her long sold-out Wigmore Hall recital, Latvian Elīna Garanča chose a daunting sequence of song series by Schumann, Wagner and Mahler, ending the official programme with other-worldly poise in what sounded exactly as it Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A musicals-intensive season gets off to a wan start with 9 to 5, a retooled West End version of a 2009 Broadway flop based on the beloved 1980 film that proffered a sisterhood for the ages in the combo of Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin. Parton gets bigtime producing billing on a stage venture for which she has provided a so-so (albeit Tony-nominated) score, and her shining face graces the onstage screens to clue us into the none-too-difficult plot and provide a fairly hoary Donald Trump joke. But it's clear pretty much from the start that Jeff Calhoun's production is aiming low and Read more ...