Reviews
Boyd Tonkin
Odin the All-Father, “lord of the slain, the gallows god”, has two ravens that “perch on his shoulders and whisper into his ears” as he wanders in disguise around the world. They are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory. Over many centuries, the folk-stories of the northlands have lodged in our memory and shaped our thought. “Winter is coming” runs the doomy refrain of Game of Thrones, haunting the imagination of the millennial millions who have never directly heard of Ragnarok, “the end of all things”, and the big chill of the “Fimbulwinter” that will usher in apocalypse. George RR Martin Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Erasmo Carlos got his break in August 1965 when the TV show Jovem Guarda (The Young Guard) began its run. Filmed before a live audience in São Paulo and broadcast nationally, it was pop as never seen before in Brazil. On screen, Roberto Carlos and his unrelated songwriting sidekick Erasmo Carlos – born Erasmo Esteves – presided over a frothy, energetic mix of singers, song, fashion and lifestyle tips which confirmed to Brazil that its pop music was as vital – within the county, anyway – as the internationally lauded Bossa Nova. The roots of MPB – Música Popular Brasileira – reach back to Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Philip Ridley has one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary theatre. His imagination is laced with sci-fi images and an East End gothic sensibility, and his mastery of storytelling continues to surprise and delight. In 1991, he kicked off his playwriting career – having already written several books and the script for The Krays – by penning The Pitchfork Disney, a stunning example of leftfield writing that still dazzles with its intensity and its magical vision. This revival is by wonderboy Jamie Lloyd, and includes Hayley Squires (who occasionally lit up the Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The BBC Symphony Orchestra has continued its long-standing support of British contemporary music with this première of a new commission, Michael Zev Gordon’s Violin Concerto for violinist Carolin Widmann. Gordon’s music deals in abstracts – new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, simple and complex – but with an unusual directness and clarity of expression. The concerto is not a virtuoso showpiece, but rather an exploration of the lyrical and expressive qualities of Widmann’s playing. It proved an ideal match, with Widmann here making the best possible case for the new work.Widmann’s tone, Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The creative partnership between Ed Harcourt and Martha Wainwright is an intriguing one. He is an out and out showman, full of stage presence, bravado and tinged with thespiness. She is an introverted, quirky creative, flanked by the comfort of a full band. But there's no doubting that together they make beautiful music.Their songs, whether independent or duet, trip through the lyrical poetry of tender ballads, rousing guitar riffs, cloudy folk and abstract punk tunes with a touch of vintage jazz. Bathed in the soft, warm lights and before an intimate audience at the Roundhouse, the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
There aren't many films that at (nearly) three hours in length leave you wanting more. But such is the hypnotic grip cast by Maren Ade's Oscar-nominated Toni Erdmann that its final image seems as much the prelude to something as a closing note on what has come before. A dark comedy about a father who risks destroying the daughter he also clearly loves, the movie rides multiple shifts in tone with remarkable ease. You can only imagine the cringe-making American remake that with luck does not await. The title character is in fact the forbidding-looking alias of Winfried Conradi (Peter Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
The writing of Tennessee Williams, said his contemporary Arthur Miller, planted “the flag of beauty on the shores of commercial theatre”. This American production of Williams’s breakthrough play – a hit on Broadway and at the Edinburgh Festival last summer – does not disappoint in the beauty stakes, drawing both eye and ear to its chamber-work delicacy, translucent as one of Laura Wingfield’s glass animals.The production is directed by John Tiffany, a creative force behind the West End's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and, sure enough, inexplicable things happen here, too. Tom Wingfield ( Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Oh clever title: cheetahs, when fully grown at about 18 months, are the fastest mammal on earth, clocking 70 miles per hour in short bursts. For this documentary, we were in the magnificent country of Zimbabwe, in all seasons, following a cheetah family which uncharacteristically lived in forest as well as river plain.Guided by the soothing and authoritative voice of Sir David Attenborough, armed with an elegant script, we followed the fortunes over nearly two years of a mother cheetah and her five cubs, four females and a male. We were enabled to do this by the cameraman and conservationist Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Odd bedfellows are an ideal subject for comedy, and for passion — because opposites attract, right? Well this is certainly the set up of the latest and smartish new drama from American playwright and House of Cards script-writer Laura Eason, which tells the story of an odd-couple meeting that results in some hot sex and some even more heated ambition. In this two-hander, its latest homage to Americana, the Hampstead Theatre has cast Emilia Fox, the Silent Witness regular who has previously appeared here in Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, as well as television and film star Theo Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
This was supposed to be a triumphant return – one final encore for the production so good that audiences just couldn’t let it go. Instead, this 13th revival of Jonathan Miller’s Mafia Rigoletto seems like an apology. The designs are handsome as ever, the concept as neat, but the details of both direction and music are so scrappy and scattered that the show feels more like a basement clear-out than a loving restoration. Raw, gritty brass launched the Prelude harshly on opening night, setting the tone for an evening where beauty was consistently the last, rather than then first, Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Loving is not just a love story, it’s also the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple from Virginia who got married in 1958. Richard was white, Mildred was not, and because interracial marriage was banned in Virginia, they were both arrested under the anti-miscegenation laws. Eventually the landmark case went to the Supreme Court and the ruling changed the face of America – a reminder in these deranged times that US lawyers can make justice work. Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special) dramatises the facts with restraint, drawing on Nancy Buirksi’s 2008 Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It's no accident that when the Globe's Sam Wanamaker Playhouse opened in 2014 it was with The Duchess of Malfi. This wooden womb, with its thick darkness and close-pressed audience is made for the stifling, claustrophobic horror of revenge tragedy. Not since that original Malfi have we seen a production that has taken full advantage of the theatre, played with atmosphere to such horrible effect as Annie Ryan’s White Devil.Corrupt authority, sexual scandal, political intrigue: not a Trump White House, but Webster’s satire, dark as the ink in which it was written. This tale of the sexually Read more ...