Reviews
Florence Hallett
Exhibitions routinely claim to be a once in a lifetime experience, but there can be no doubt about the prince among them this year, the Royal Academy’s spectacular Charles I: King and Collector. Reuniting old master paintings, miniatures, classical sculptures and tapestries acquired by the king and dispersed after his execution in 1649, the show was a feat of administration, while the reflected glory of its association with that great icon of the art market today, the Salvator Mundi, which sold for a record sum in November 2017, made it seem uncannily timely. Attributed to Leonardo though its Read more ...
Owen Richards
Janelle Monáe had already established herself as pop’s next great innovator with The ArchAndroid and Electric Ladyland, two albums full of earworms, high production and retro-futuristic lyrics. This all-too-brief musical career seemed in jeopardy when Monáe successfully made the jump to film, with her debut features Hidden Figures and Moonlight winning heavily at the Oscars. After all, her act was as much reliant on theatre as it was songwriting, perhaps this was always the endgame. But with the joint release of singles “Django Jane” and “Make Me Feel” in early 2018, it appeared that if Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Will pride of place amongst theatre productions every year go in perpetuity to the work of Stephen Sondheim? One might be tempted to think so given the preeminence during 2017 of Dominic Cooke's breathtaking revival of Follies (due back in the National Theatre repertoire from February) and the equal strength of this year's musical theatre reclamation of choice, Company, the Sondheim title that immediately preceded Follies on Broadway. The chance before long to see these two stagings back-to-back is enough to make any theatre lover's heart skip a beat even as a glance back at 2018 finds Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In 1955, Sylvia Plath attended the Advent Carol Service at King’s College in Cambridge. Like countless other visitors, listeners and viewers before and since, she was entranced by “the tall chapel, with its cobweb lace of fan-vaulting” lit by “myriads of flickering candles”, and above all by the “clear bell-like” voices of the choristers, with their “utterly pure and crystal notes”. The American poet told her mother in a letter that “I never have been so moved in my life”. For a century now – the first Christmas service took place in 1918 – the “unearthly silvery glitter” of carols sung by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Moments into “Maker of me”, it’s evident that The Story of Valerie is special. A circular piano figure accompanies a disembodied female voice singing and speaking of a relationship that’s “greater than myself.” Punctuation from a bass guitar is sprinkled sparingly. The next track, “Golden Boy”, is similarly formidable but employs an electronic keyboard, a drum machine and features an even more intense vocal. The singer – Carola Baer – is striving for a form of ecstasy.The Story of Valerie’s third track “Love me” is doubly impassioned. A keyboard conjuring a pattern evoking Philip Glass meshes Read more ...
theartsdesk
While the Academy Awards is still searching for a host, theartsdesk's relatively controversy-free 2018 means we're ready for our end of year tributes. Superhero saturation reached breaking point, with Warner's Aquaman, Fox's Deadpool 2 and Sony's Venom all desperately trying to keep up with Disney's three(!) Marvel releases (and that's not including several animated releases). It might feel like this cinematic war will last for infinity, but away from the multiplexes were some of the most affecting and gorgeous films in recent memory. Here our team picks their highlights from both blockbuster Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The highlight of 2018 for me was the return of two mighty sets of talents – Flight of the Conchords and The League of Gentlemen – and it was heartwarming to see that they had lost none of their sharpness, wit or love of performing in front of a live audience. In stand-up, while a lot of established comics were again producing the goods, one newcomer, a young Irishwoman, stood out. We lost some comedy legends this year, too – Ken Dodd, Barry Elliott of the Chuckle Brothers and Jim Bowen, who had all had a career resurgence as a new generation had discovered their work, are now, to borrow Dodd' Read more ...
theartsdesk
Bruce Springsteen once sang about there being "57 channels and nothin' on". Those were the days. Now we have so much to watch (including Netflix's Springsteen on Broadway) that all the world's remaining elephants couldn't remember them all.But stress not. Theartsdesk's critics have bent themselve to the herculean task of sifting the annals of 2018 to find the most nutritious nuggets and the most noxious no-hopers. Among these, you may even find the odd specimen of that supposedly defunct species, the "appointment to view" programme. Oddly, despite what the media gurus like to tell us, viewers Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Sarah Phelps’s annual reboot of a canonical murder mystery by Agatha Christie has rapidly established itself as a Christmas staple of TV drama. And Then There Were None, The Witness for the Prosecution and Ordeal by Innocence (which was postponed to Easter) are now followed by The ABC Murders (BBC One), which feels like the biggest creative challenge Phelps has yet faced in her rebranding project. Previously she has skirted clear of Christie’s iconic detectives but could not dodge them indefinitely. Here she has taken on the task of stripping the fussy layers of gloss off the overpainted Read more ...
Veronica Lee
After the heart-breaking ending to the third series earlier this year, which covered the death of William Shakespeare's young son, Hamnet, it was back to the comedy for this seasonal special. But there was no jarring handbrake turn for writer Ben Elton who, like his hero the Bard, has form in melding tragedy and comedy to great effect. Rather he used that storyline to make a narratively sound segue from loss to laughter; in A Crow Christmas Carol the Shakespeares, feeling unable to celebrate the season at their home in Stratford-upon-Avon, decide to spend the holiday at Will's lodgings Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won their ice skating gold medal at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics in 1984, notching up an all-time record score which included 12 perfect sixes, it looked like a real-life fairytale. The Nottingham-born duo had dragged themselves up from their working-class origins and day jobs – Torvill in an insurance office and Dean in the police force – and seared themselves into history and a delirious nation’s affections with their innovative dance to Ravel’s Boléro.Happily, this biographical film (it admitted that it was “a fictionalised account of true events”) Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In 2017, the BBC Wales team with director Rhodri Huw filmed a Christmas show in the old 1888 Coal Exchange in Cardiff, now a hotel. Tom Jones and Beverley Knight’s Gospel Christmas was an exciting and upbeat show, which ended in an electrifying “Born in Bethlehem”. Knight was jumping around as if she’d had springs fitted, the radio mic on her back somehow staying attached to her.This year, they returned to the same building and went jazz with Merry Christmas Baby - with Gregory Porter & Friends. Instead of the hwyl and the energy, this year’s Welsh seasoning, liberally applied, was Read more ...