Reviews
David Nice
Yet another full Proms house sat down, and of course stood, for a rather strange six course meal which turned out not quite what the menu had led us to anticipate. While it was obvious that the rare and expensive bird dishes were going to be quickly over, the hors d’oeuvres in the shape of Mozart ballet music proved piquant but too many, and the real meat which we might have expected in Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements appeared instead in a work too often mislabelled a soufflé, Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto, through the alchemy of masterchef soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, who also Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not been very prominent in the news recently, but that doesn’t mean that it has gone away. As Julia Pascal’s 2003 play reminds us, religious and cultural tensions can go deep. Very deep. At the centre of her intense story, which is set over about 24 hours during the second intifada, is Jerusalem, a divided city, a contested territory, a place which is dangerous to cross. As bombs explode in cafés and on buses, the events of the drama illustrate the tight embrace of the personal and the political.Varda Kaufmann-Goldstein is an Israeli estate agent who is Read more ...
graham.rickson
Nielsen: Complete Symphonies BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds (Chandos)Recently completed Nielsen cycles by Alan Gilbert and Sakari Oramo have been released on separate discs. Chandos have issued John Storgårds’ new cycle in a single mid-price package. So it’s possible to spend a satisfying few hours working chronologically through the sequence, noting the thematic links, the stylistic tics which make this composer’s music so compelling. Oscillating semiquavers in woodwinds are a recurring feature, and Nielsen’s knack of writing neat fugues was present from the start. As with Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Multiple stars are born in The Diary of a Teenage Girl, the conventionally titled film premiered earlier this year at Sundance that turns out to be unconventional in every way that matters. Adapted from Phoebe Gloeckner's novel about a 15-year-old's coming of age in the swinging, drugs-soaked San Francisco of the 1970s, first-time director Marielle Heller has made one of the most probing films yet about that painful journey we all make through what Henry James so succinctly titled "the awkward age".Along the way, Heller has given 23-year-old Bel Powley the breakout role of anyone's dreams, Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Never in a million years would you guess that Grand Hotel – the 1989 New York hit now brilliantly revived at Southwark Playhouse – is one of Broadway's great rescue jobs. That something seemingly so organic, so cohesive, so intricate could have reached the final stages of production in such trouble that even a force of nature like Tony-winner Maury Yeston (Nine) must have wondered it if were salvageable simply beggars belief. George Forrest and Robert Wright were, of course, famous for recycling other people's music and making hit songs out of hit tunes, but the changes that Yeston made Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
When Al Pacino burst into the spotlight as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, his celebrated co-star was Marlon Brando, who for years had been giving eccentric performances and making a mockery of his talent, but was about to offer audiences a reminder of the innately consummate actor he was.Pacino’s always been much more committed to his work than Brando, and yet for too long now he’s not been kind to his reputation, resorting so often to exaggeration and ham that it was getting hard to recall him in his prime. Scent of a Woman’s Frank Slade has a lot to answer for.But his recent portrait of Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The premise is a simple one. Get some fairly well-known celebs – preferably at least one comedian – stick them in a room, get them to say some contentious things in front of a studio audience for some un-PC LOLs and then edit it down to a hilarious TV hour. By gifting this vehicle to the singular talent of Katie Hopkins, a person whose DNA seems to be comprised of twisted fragments from the Daily Mail sidebar of shame, TLC have found their Jeremy Clarkson. A no-nonsense star who doesn’t suffer fools. Or, it would seem, the disadvantaged, poor and vulnerable.Keeping order in the melee, as Read more ...
Graham Fuller
In John Ford’s rueful 1946 allegory about the human cost of America’s new role as global peacekeeper, Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) agrees to clean up Tombstone, Arizona, as a pretext for revenging his teenage brother's murder by Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan) and his rustler sons.Ford dodges many facts about the real Earp clan’s politically driven feud with the Cochise County ranchers’ faction, which erupted inconclusively in the 1881 OK Corral gunfight. Frank Perry’s revisionist Doc (1971) comes closer to the skimpily documented truth but lacks My Darling Clementine’s mythic resonance and Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Helen Edmundson’s The Heresy of Love may be set in 17th century Mexico and follow the conflict between strict religion and personal development, but its theme of a woman denied her voice by a surrounding male hierarchy retains real contemporary relevance. First staged at the RSC three years ago, the dramatic strengths of the work shine through in this new Globe production, which reminds us most of all of Edmundson’s confident craft and limberness of language.Her subject is the life of Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz (Naomi Frederick, excellent), one of the first major writers of the Spanish- Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
An affectingly restrained Australian drama of adolescent development coloured by the repercussions of a parent undergoing gender transition, 52 Tuesdays may initially seem understated in its exploration of the balances (and imbalances) of family relationships under stress, but finally achieves something rather deeper than its innovative broken-up narrative style at first suggests.The film’s title is explained by first-time feature director Sophie Hyde’s decision to divide her story into weekly sections (filmed just that way, once a week over the course of a year, with cast only given notes Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
This programme was a puzzle. It didn't quite work, and it should have worked an absolute treat, as Buddhism is in some respects the religion, or rather the way of life, that has more and more caught the attention of the West in terms of scholarship and practitioners. It was an hour-long visual history, tracing in a trip through the subcontinent the life of the Buddha, presented by the charming and knowledgeable historian Bettany Hughes.It was the first instalment in a trilogy examining the life, times and thought of three philosophers: Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, all of whom Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
On TV, the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones is usually the most shocking and pivotal. In the game? Maybe not so much.We rejoin the disparate members of House Forrester after a rather downbeat third episode. Former squire Gared is accused of murdering a fellow brother in the Night's Watch, brash mercenary Asher has reached Daenerys Targaryen but finds the Mother Of Dragons less cooperative than he might have liked and naive lady-in-waiting Mira finds herself ensnared in the machinations of court. Meanwhile, back at chez Forrester, newly-appointed Lord Roderik struggles under the mailed Read more ...