Reviews
Veronica Lee
Ricky Gervais begins by bringing us up to date with the latest “outrage” he has caused; two Netflix specials, SuperNature and Armageddon, upset some people, he tells us, thus giving them even more attention than they might otherwise have had. So now with Mortality he's probably going to upset some more, thus making the Netflix special that will follow its lengthy tour (ending in November next year) even more successful. “Stupid cunts.”Well, yes, Gervais is very good at needling those who no doubt will take umbrage at some of the jokes in Mortality, the ones about slavery, or paedophiles and Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
'Tis the season for all manner of bugs, colds and illnesses. One had befallen Katy J Pearson, who struck an apologetic note after the night’s first number to say she had been unwell all day and was going to do her best to get through the gig. That added an unexpected element to proceedings, namely by creating the potential for the whole show to come to a sudden halt at any point.Yet Pearson was otherwise unaffected, save for a jokey remark she made about her bodily functions that she just as rapidly quipped she regretted making. She was helped certainly, by a three-piece backing band of heft Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“I am not better than my fathers.” Cracked, pained, occasionally rasping, rising to a fearsome roar then subsiding to a throaty whisper, Sir Bryn Terfel’s still-formidable bass-baritone made the great vault of Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford shrink to a shoebox.With all the vocal charisma of old, and lashings of unashamed theatricality, Terfel (pictured below by Mitch Jenkins) delivered the great despairing lament, “It is enough”, that most obviously acknowledges the debt Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah owes to the Passions of JS Bach. Mendelssohn’s outcast prophet pleads for the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
White Denim’s literally titled 12th album opens with the fidgety “Light on.” Drawing a line between electronica and Tropicália, it exudes sunniness. “Econolining” and “Flash Bare Ass,” up next, are equally peppy, as bright and similarly accord with the idea of pop as a mix-and-match grab bag – albeit from an off-centre perspective.After this, 12 is about left turns. No one style is embraced. Each track has its own character, distinct from what has come before. “Flash Bare Ass” – a wry commentary on forming relationships in the mobile-phone era – is followed by “Cat City #2”, a 40-ish seconds Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHBlood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)When death metal takes LSD it’s quite a thing. Whether this band have done acid or not, the output of Colorado's Blood Incantation feels that way on their fourth album. Each side is one long suite. “The Stargate” and “The Message”, 20 minutes and 23 minutes respectively, both three-part odysseys that take in Floydian guitar solos, ambient Gregorian-style chanting, Seventies synth-wizarding, lilting reggae rhythms and much else, occasionally and suddenly exploding into galloping guitar squalls underpinned by frenetic blast Read more ...
Robert Beale
Kahchun Wong’s final concert of 2024 in the Hallé Manchester season was something of a surprise. At first sight, the sparkle in the programme seemed likely to come from James MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel – his percussion concerto, with the star name of Colin Currie as soloist – and from Malcolm Arnold’s Four Scottish Dances (especially the third of them) to precede it.Afterwards, it was to be Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony to finish, and that’s been played and heard many times before. In the event, the first two works did sparkle, but the symphony intrigued.The Arnold dances are great fun: Read more ...
David Nice
How many Rigolettos have regular operagoers among you sat through where there wasn’t some major defect, in either the production or the three major roles? Here, there is none. INO’s jester and Duke are well cast, its Gilda supernaturally perfect in music and acting, while Julien Chavaz’s production, despite a few passing irritations, adds up to a coherent and disciplined whole. INO Artistic Director Fergus Sheil keeps Verdi's vivid music theatre on the move.Do Irish audiences know how lucky they are to see world-class opera again and again? Last night's full house, in marked contrast to the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Last month a portrait of Alan Turing by AI robot AI-Da sold at Sotheby’s for $1.08 million – proof that, in some people’s eyes, artificial intelligence can produce paintings worth as much as those made by human hands.Depending on your view of AI, this can either be a very exciting or deeply depressing idea; whichever way you lean, it makes Tate Modern’s exhibition of work by the pioneers of machine art extremely timely.This exhaustive (and exhausting) show starts in the 1950s with Japanese artist Atsuko Tanaka. In response to the neon signs brightening up Osaka’s streets in the aftermath of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The return to shops of a consecutive sequence of five of John Cale's Seventies albums through different labels is undoubtedly coincidental. All have been previously reissued multiple times and none are scarce in any form. Anyone wanting any of these albums presumably already has a copy. Nonetheless, it’s good that these makeovers sustain the profile of Cale’s idiosyncratic take on art-rock.The Academy in Peril was originally issued in July 1972. Cale’s third solo album after his 1968 departure from The Velvet Underground, it followed-up March 1970’s Vintage Violence and April 1971’s Terry Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“You either got faith or you got unbelief, and there ain’t no neutral ground,” as Bob Dylan sang, but Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) isn’t finding it quite that simple.The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died, and in his last act in this world he appointed Lawrence to supervise the conclave that would choose his successor. But Lawrence has been struggling with his own faith of late, and negotiating the spider’s web of politics, personalities and clandestine intrigue that infests the sepulchral corridors of the Vatican threatens to overwhelm him.Yet he also realises that, much as he might wish for Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
If Harold Pinter’s work represents, as he slyly joked, the weasel under the cocktail cabinet, then Oscar Wilde’s represents the stiletto in the Victorian sponge – at a time when the stiletto was a slim dagger used for assassination. Beneath the fopperies and fripperies of his fin-de-siècle classic, every line draws blood as he skewers the false gods and hypocrisies of his age.On paper there’s plenty to tempt audiences to the National Theatre’s latest production of Wilde's searing attack on social convention. Maybe you’re seduced by the thought of a cast that includes current Dr Who, Read more ...
Heather Neill
It's all too easy to underplay the melancholy of Shakespeare's comedy of divided twins, misplaced – sometimes narcissistic – love, drunken frolics and a Puritan given his comeuppance. Tom Littler's decision to present the action in a very English Illyria during the years following World War II immediately sets the melancholy tone, but with pleasure bursting to make an entrance.The names of lost soldiers (loved ones nominated by real people) are inscribed in a memorial around the stage, a bell tolls until it rings for victory, and it is clear that Olivia is mourning a brother who has died in Read more ...