Reviews
Tom Birchenough
Chilean director Pablo Larrain has described Neruda as a “false biopic”, and it’s a film that surprises on many levels in its presentation of Pablo Neruda, the great poet who is his country’s best-known cultural figure. It captivates for the scope of its invention, its ludic combination of reality and artifice, poetry and politics, as well as the contradictions of its central character.Larrain's last film Jackie was also a biopic with a difference, but Neruda goes further in every sense. It’s also something of a departure from the director’s earlier works, such as No and Post Mortem, which Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
The first thing that hits me as I walk into Concorde 2 is the age and energy of the audience, dominated by excitable booze-fuelled teenagers. Black Honey themselves are pretty young for a band capable of quickly selling out a 600-capacity venue, with the singer noting that “it feels like just yesterday we played here and couldn’t sell two tickets”. Their following has grown steadily over the last few years, thanks to their accessible pop singles and constant comparisons to Lana Del Rey and Lush. Now, it seems that just about everyone in Brighton wants a ticket to see them.First, however, are Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Mary Magdalene: Art's Scarlet Woman (BBC Four) is, says art critic Waldemar Januszczak, a film about a woman who probably never existed. "So why,” he asks, “are we so obsessed with her?” He delivers the answer in breathy, lugubrious tones as if sharing a dirty secret. The story, he says, is “sweaty, sensuous and naughty... For 2,000 years we’ve been fantasising about this most alluring and intoxicating presence.”So keep watching, folks. and join the “many men who, through the ages, have drooled over her.” It's enough to make anyone switch off, which would be a shame because the story that Read more ...
Heather Neill
Asked in an interview if there remained any taboos in the theatre, Edward Albee answered, “Yes. I don’t think you should be allowed to bore an intelligent, responsive, sober audience”. An experienced interviewee, he pokes mischievous fun at a celebrity Q&A in the first scene of The Goat, revived in the West End, to reveal the distraction of Martin (Damian Lewis), an architect at the pinnacle of his career.Ross, his oldest friend, is attempting to interview him for a television series entitled “People Who Matter”. Martin is not focused, the questions seem banal, they talk at cross purposes Read more ...
Liz Thomson
One thing was very clear at Wednesday night’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall – at the moment at least, Scotland has something of a monopoly when it comes to folk music talent. While Desert Island Discs suggests the current First Minister’s tastes are rather more commercial than those of her predecessor in the post, if push comes to shove, maybe folk music will be a bargaining chip in the discussions over independence.That’s not to say there wasn’t talent also from south of the border, or from across the Irish Sea (Daoirí Farrell picked up two baubles), or from America Read more ...
David Nice
Who needs hallucinogenic drugs when we have Debussy's two books of Préludes? In the hands, that is, of a pianist magician who holds the key to this wild parade, demi-real wonderland, call it what you will. I've only heard two wizards equal to the whole sequence: on disc, Krystian Zimerman, graced by a wide recorded range the old masters could never command, and now, in the concert hall, Alexander Melnikov. Between them, they prove that Debussy can be not only ravishingly remote, but violent, too, and scary as hell.Debussy's curiosity spans thousands of years, from ancient Egyptian funerary Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s a while since John Mayall last played Ronnie Scott’s, and the six shows this week didn’t begin to accommodate his many fans. The line to get in on Tuesday started a long while before show-time, and those who turned up hoping for returns will be pleased to know the British blues legend will be heading back to Britain in the autumn. Those lucky enough to possess tickets were treated to an excellent opening show, much of it drawn from his recent album Talk About That.Just as he did when Mayall celebrated his eightieth birthday at Ronnie’s, Nigel Price opened the proceedings with a great Read more ...
aleks.sierz
It’s hot. Real hot. And you’re dancing, just lost in music. You’re at the legendary Shrine nightclub in Lagos, where Afrobeat star Fela Kuti is king. It’s 1994. And it’s hot. Sweat is just pouring off you, no longer in little trickles but soaking through your clothes. And still you dance. As the beat pounds along, you can hear Fela intone: “Men are born; kings are made”, then something about “one nation, indivisible”, before he says, “War has never been the answer — long live Nigeria! Viva Africa!” It sounds like glory. Surely this is heaven on earth.The next day, in Adura Onashile’s 65- Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It has been a long, long time since Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais wrote a new sitcom; in their heyday they created The Likely Lads and its sequel, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, all of which have become classics of the genre. The duo went to live in Los Angeles some decades ago to work in both film and TV, but now return with a new sitcom, set in the fictional but contemporary court of King Henry IX.Henry IX follows in the writers' familiar territory of having their characters confined by circumstance. Likely Lads Bob and Terry were hemmed in by Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Not every artist attains the kind of status that will allow their early works to be revived – or, when revived, greeted with commercial and critical success. This is something of a shame for those of us with a historical mindset who like seeing where an artist has come from and how they have developed. Of course, some things are best left in a box under the bed with your teenage diaries, but Early Adventures, a tight selection of Matthew Bourne works from 1989-1991 which opened last night at Sadler's Wells, is not one of them.The Infernal Galop and Town & Country, both shown in the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Rape is such a serious social issue that it’s hardly surprising that several recent plays have tackled it. I’m thinking of Gary Owen’s Violence and Son, James Fritz’s Four Minutes Twelve Seconds and Evan Placey’s Consensual. All of these discuss, whether implicitly or explicitly, the notion of consent, which is the name of playwright and director Nina Raine’s latest drama about the subject. As staged at the National Theatre by director Roger Michell and starring his wife Anna Maxwell Martin, this promised to be a thrilling evening.And it doesn’t disappoint. Immediately we find ourselves among Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In the beginning it was about good catastrophes. A shotgun pregnancy after a hot hook-up. A dysfunctional transatlantic romance in which opposites attract. The boredom of looking after babies. The boredom of being a wage slave. Catastrophe was created out of an unlikely sitcom scenario that managed somehow to stay funny through two series on Channel 4.The third series, in which avid fans probably expected more of the same good thing, has struggled to land on a robust and coherent through-line. There have still been wonderful laughs. Sharon and Rob carried on amusing each other: she guffawed Read more ...