Reviews
Adam Sweeting
When Bruce Springsteen’s one-man show opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on New York’s West 48th Street in October last year it was only supposed to run for six weeks. This being Springsteen, however, demand proved almost limitless, so the season was extended twice, and the Boss (as he doesn't like being called) takes his last bow on 15 December.So you never got a ticket? No worries. There’s an audio version of the show in various formats, and now Netflix is launching a full-scale film of the event, directed by Thom Zimny, which puts you right at the front of the stalls and lets you see Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Mark Ravenhill, who shot to fame in 1996 with his in-yer-face shocker Shopping and Fucking, has been more or less absent from our stages for about a decade. The last play of his that I saw at the Royal Court was the Cold-War fantasy Over There – that was in 2009. So his current show, called with brutal directness The Cane and about a teacher who used to administer corporal punishment, is something of a comeback. And it's got a cast that's hard to beat (sorry): Alun Armstrong, Maggie Steed and Nicola Walker. They are directed by Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the venue and Read more ...
David Nice
Once upon a time there was the terrible mouth of Richard Jones's Welsh National Opera/Met Hänsel und Gretel, finding an idiosyncratic equivalent to the original Engelbert Humperdinck's dark Wagnerian heart. Then came something very nasty in the witch's deep freeze of the last Royal Opera staging, something of a dog's dinner from Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. It seems that The House got cold feet about the cold store after tabloid uproar - though not so much as to stop a revival - and the result now is a much cleaner but not much more flavoursome fantasy by director-designer Antony Read more ...
Tim Cornwell
One emotional high point in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the much-lauded Simon Stephens adaptation that is back in our midst once more, comes when the teenage Christopher Boone is floated in the air as part of his dream of being an astronaut. It's a touchingly improbable, escapist fantasy – that a teenager with autism would be launched in a spacecraft – and it comes via a piece of stage magic when he is borne aloft by the rest of the ensemble cast, his pet rat, Toby, flying in tandem. Perhaps space is the solitary place where he won't panic and Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Welcome to your first day in the afterlife! Everything is fine! Eleanor Shellstrop (a sparkling Kristen Bell) is dead, but hey, that’s cool, because she’s made it into the Good Place. Michael (the divine Ted Danson) is architect of this brightly coloured afterlife with its abnormally high ratio of frozen yoghurt parlours. “People love frozen yoghurt. I don’t know what to tell you,” sighs Michael.He explains the algorithm for entry to Eleanor: after death, good and bad deeds are weighed up using a “totally accurate measuring system”. For example, ignoring a text message during an in- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The time of giving is here and what better presents than great slabs of lovely vinyl; sounds that bring joy to all. Our last theartsdesk on Vinyl of the year is packed with boxsets and reissues as well as a couple of seasonal bits. From a Shrek picture-disc to Kate Bush's entire back catalogue to Los Angeles’ latest alt-tronica, there are more music flavours here than even Santa can claim (having been to his crib, we can assure Santa’s vinyl collection is pretty limited, with the exception of a wall of Doom Metal). So, theartsdesk on Vinyl wishes you a top 2019 and every good thing for the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
For those of us who have never thought much before about links between pantomime and Shakespeare, Fiona Laird’s new Merry Wives offers a chance to see how the combination works. Making short shrift of tradition, her version of the Falstaff comedy transports the action to a distinctly contemporary environment, with The Only Way Is Essex the most obvious cultural reference point, though there’s surely a touch of Albert Square, too. At its best, it manages a rambunctious energy and humour that should cut through the objections of purists.Most such protests will be centred around its treatment of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The story of Lizzie Borden, controversially acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892, has been explored many times on screen and in print (there’s even an opera and a musical version, not to mention the Los Angeles metal band Lizzy Borden). However, this new take on the story starring Chlöe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart from director Craig William Macneill and screenwriter Bryce Kass focuses forensically on the why rather than the who, and transforms the story into a fraught and penetrating psychological thriller.Fittingly for our Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Royal Northern College of Music’s December opera production was the useful double bill of Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi from Puccini’s Trittico. I say useful, because the former employs a women’s chorus (and, briefly, a full one) plus 16 named roles, and the latter a cast of 16 – an opportunity for a big opera department to put plenty of its singers on the stage: it’s one they’ve taken before.This time there was the difference that the eponymous characters were sung by RNCM artists in residence Linda Richardson and Quentin Hayes – a first, as far as I’m aware, and one that gave poise Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It's been 40 years since The Double Dealer last had a major airing (indeed, perhaps any airing) in London, so on the basis of novelty value alone, the Orange Tree's end-of-year offering is worth our attention. But as always with Restoration comedy, Congreve's 1693 story of romantic skulduggery and misalliance poses a basic problem: how do you make sense of a byzantine plot characteristic of the genre? Selina Cadell, the fine actress here turning once again to directing, meets the matter head-on with a newly added prologue telling us not to fret it and by then ramping up the physicality and Read more ...
Saskia Baron
As the priest said, "Understanding comes first, then forgiveness". Thus the rather enjoyable (if slightly overstretched) Mrs Wilson came to a not exactly happy, but certainly forgiving, ending. Ruth Wilson held the screen over three episodes of this period drama, playing her own real life grandmother Alison Wilson. But the story’s pivotal figure was her extraordinary grandfather, Alexander Wilson, who wove a tapestry of lies around his love life and probably his role as a British secret agent.Upon his death in 1963, Alison discovered that her husband had not just lied to her about divorcing Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Janáček has been an abiding passion for Thomas Adès. As both composer and performer, Adès revels in the whimsical and the absurd, and he finds both in Janáček’s piano works. This recital presented the complete surviving piano music of Janáček (pictured below), for the most part a miscellany of miniature character pieces, some quirky, others more profound. Adès performed them all with an urbane sophistication, distant from the music’s folk roots, but with many surprises of his own added along the way.Three major cycles form the basis of Janáček’s piano catalogue, Along an Overgrown Path, the Read more ...