Reviews
Matt Wolf
Can London support two dance musicals, each one dazzling in a different way? We're about to find out, now that the mother of all toe-tappers, 42nd Street, has set up shop a jeté or two away from where An American in Paris is achieving balletic lift-off. Similar generically but as different in content and approach as two major Broadway transplants to the West End can be, 42nd Street proves decisively that sometimes bigger really is better. You can scale back Sondheim and the like to rending effect, but when it comes to the sheer synchronised splendour accompanying an army of Read more ...
David Kettle
The harsh metallic rasp of a cigarette lighter; a glamorous, vulnerable prostitute in distress; a noble lone crime-fighter standing dejected in the rain. All the familiar tropes of noir are present and correct – in fact, almost self-consciously ticked off – in this entertaining thriller from Pete Travis (Dredd, Endgame). But they’re in a jarringly unfamiliar context: this is modern-day, grimy, multi-ethnic west London – located specifically with mentions of Scrubs Lane and Kensal Rise tube station – with its relentless gentrification, luxury housing developments sprouting all around, small- Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Anyone with even a passing interest in surrealism should watch Philippa Perry finding out How to Be a Surrealist and, in the process, creating an exhilarating and richly informative BBC Four film. In October 1924 the Surrealists opened an office in Paris called the Bureau of Surrealist Research and invited people to drop in to recount their dreams. Despite calling it research, their approach was far from academic; rather than analysing the material they gathered, they drew inspiration from it.Perry uses a similar approach. She dives enthusiastically into their world and work and, despite Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“What if I’ve made a terrible mistake?” Angie (a flirty, engaging Elizabeth Moss) is about to give birth to psychiatrist RD Laing’s baby, and you have to agree that it’s not the wisest plan. She’s confiding in one of the disturbed residents of Kingsley Hall, Laing’s experimental psychiatric community in east London where therapists and patients lived communally, anti-psychotic drugs and ECT were outlawed and LSD (and going to the pub) was part of the cure.Angie, an American psychologist, is drawn irresistibly to Laing’s charisma, Paisley shirts and velvet suits. She moves in with him and the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The social permutations of love are beguilingly explored in the 90-minute stage traffic of Marivaux’s The Lottery of Love, with Paul Miller’s production at the Orange Tree Theatre making the most of the venue’s unencumbered in-the-round space to dance the action along at a brisk pace. The only adornment in Simon Daw’s design is an elaborate chandelier, bedecked with candles and hanging roses, but the sheer élan of the piece more than occupies the stage in itself.The theatre's Richmond location couldn’t be better either, the Georgian villas around its Green and along the Thames just the kind Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Balanchine's Jewels is catnip to dedicated ballet lovers. A homage, faithful and brilliant as only a master could make, to three different styles of choreography and three different national sensibilities, it's as dense, expertly carved and glittering as the gems of the title.It is also plotless, and so presents a signficant challenge to the performers, who must hold an audience's attention for a whole evening without the aid of narrative or emotional material. After all, however beautiful the sight of Royal Ballet dancers in sparkly tutus in the even more sparkly Royal Opera House may be, Read more ...
David Nice
John Adams, greatest communicator among living front-rank composers, zoomed into the follow-spot for the second and third concerts of the New York Philharmonic's Barbican mini-residency. Harmonielehre, his first epic symphony in all but name, and The Chairman Dances, preliminary study for the nostalgic-cum-violent foxtrot of the Maos in Act Three of Nixon in China, are already repertoire staples, while Absolute Jest for string quartet and orchestra is about to become one; this was its third performance in London since 2013. Even so, the spotlighting was bold for a high-profile tour, Read more ...
David Kettle
What to pair with Bluebeard’s Castle? It’s always a dilemma for opera companies. Something lightweight, even comic, provides contrast but also risks trivialising Bartók’s dark, symbolist drama. Something equally brooding risks submerging the audience into an evening of endless gloom. For its collaboration with Glasgow-based experimental theatre company Vanishing Point, however, Scottish Opera has come up with a bold, ambitious solution: to pair Bluebeard’s Castle with a brand new piece, written expressly to complement it.The work in question is The 8th Door, created jointly by Scottish Opera’ Read more ...
Guy Oddy
After a career that initially came to an abrupt end amid sibling fisticuffs on a stage in Canada during the dying embers of the Twentieth Century, the Jesus & Mary Chain have taken some time to ease themselves back into being a real going concern. Reforming a decade ago to tour their old material, it has taken until now for them to take the plunge and release Damage & Joy, their first new album in 19 years.Nevertheless, the wait has been worthwhile, as the reaction to tunes old and new from the crowd at Birmingham’s Institute duly confirmed. While the Reid brothers may have found a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s been suggested that New Order’s “Blue Monday” borrowed from Gerry & The Holograms’ eponymous 1979 A-side. In July 2015, The Guardian ran an article saying “if ‘Blue Monday’ had a starting point, it was ‘Gerry & The Holograms’ by a group of the same name, an obscure Mancunian slice of electronica, released on Absurd Records.” Although the piece noted that members of New Order acknowledged their 1983 single drew on tracks by Kraftwerk, Ennio Morricone, Donna Summer and Sylvester, nothing was quoted from the band to acknowledge the apparent debt to “Gerry & The Holograms”.Yet, Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
Like many first novels, Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall has a strong whiff of autobiography. It is a revenge comedy in which Waugh – like Kingsley Amis after him in Lucky Jim – transmutes his miserable experiences of teaching in Wales into savage farce.BBC One's dramatisation begins in Oxford, 1928. Paul Pennyfeather (Jack Whitehall), a milk-and-water theology scholar, is sent down from Scone College (full of fruitcakes), for “indecent behaviour”. His crime? To run into braying members of the Bollinger Club who, having already defenestrated a pig’s head (Oink! Oink!), proceed to debag him. Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Alan Gilbert chose a surprisingly low-key programme to open the New York Philharmonic’s three-day Barbican residency, Bartók’s genre-defying Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Mahler’s modest Fourth Symphony. But it proved an engaging combination, and showed off many of the orchestra’s great strengths. Gilbert himself led with a steady hand, although his tempos were often propulsive, and even if some of the Mahler felt superficial, there were many moments of magic, especially in the last two movements, welcome reminders of the orchestra’s considerable form with this music.Bartók’s Read more ...