Reviews
Jasper Rees
Jurassic World opens on a close-up. The smooth creamy surface of an egg is shattered by a claw attacking it vexatiously from within. In no time at all a scaly little critter is peeping out at us. It took a mite longer for the latest in the Jurassic Park franchise to hatch. The last film was 14 years ago and this fourth instalment seems to have been on the development slate almost ever since. Now that it's here at last, what’s new?For starters, this is a film which will give you tinnitus. The latest generation of dinosaurs are louder, scarier, toothier. Arguably, also sillier. Twenty-two years Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Seldom has there been such impassioned debate about whether a play has a right to exist. Writer Jonathan Maitland faced a barrage of criticism, with many accusing him of exploitation; others felt it was too soon for freshly unveiled horror to re-emerge on stage. Lead actor Alistair McGowan disagreed, noting Savile’s victims feel the telling of this tale comes “30 years too late”.Maitland’s 90-minute docudrama, set in 1991, juxtaposes Savile’s public and private personas in an attempt to understand how the monster hid in plain sight. On a This Is Your Life-style show, he’s the roguish “court Read more ...
Matthew Wright
A young man, in trouble with drunk or drugs, returns to his Scottish family riven by dark secrets? Of course, it’s a new Iain Banks dramatisation, the first since the author’s death two years ago. This version of his 2012 novel Stonemouth attempts to recreate the success the BBC enjoyed with its 1996 adaptation of Banks’s Crow Road. Compressing a near-400 pages of fiction into two hours’ television requires a thicket of flashbacks that tests the viewer’s recall, and piles coincidence a little high in places, though enjoyable lead performances, and Banks’ gripping, if familiar, preoccupations Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
I’ve been trying to imagine the elevator pitch for EightyEight Games’ fine new puzzler, You Must Build A Boat. The best, most succinct description I can come up with is: “imagine if Candy Crush was any good.”You Must Build A Boat is the sequel to 2012’s 10000000. In that game, a little pixelly dude ran across a dungeon corridor at the top of the screen, trying to retrieve treasures without being defeated by monsters. You helped him out by playing a match-3 sliding block puzzle at the bottom of the screen so he could beat the monsters, unlock chests and escape the dungeon by reaching the magic Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Football is a subject close to Patrick Marber's heart. He's a lifelong Arsenal fan and during his sojourn away from London (and writing, as he was suffering from writer's block for much of it) in Sussex, he became involved with his local non-league team, Lewes, helping to establish it as a community-owned club in 2010.His beloved sport has inspired Marber's return both to the National and to playwriting (his last stage work was 2006's Don Juan in Soho and his most recent project was script-doctoring the film version Fifty Shades of Grey, which was rejected by the book's author EL James).Non- Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A steel corridor stretches as far into the distance as you can see (pictured below right); the gleaming sides and gently sloping floor invite you to step inside but, as you venture further in, it gets darker and darker until you are groping your way in pitch blackness. This unnerving experience reminded me of when, as a child, I followed my parents deep into the cliffs of north Cornwall as they gingerly crept along disused mine shafts, lighting the way with matches that quickly fizzled out. In the Hayward Gallery, I kept telling myself health and safety wouldn’t allow anyone to plummet to Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Parties in someone's back garden are often more fun than those in big fancy venues. Richard Alston Dance Company celebrated its 20th birthday with a big soirée at Sadler's Wells in January, but last night was their cheerful family gathering, held in their home theatre The Place, and offering a hearty buffet of short pieces rather than an elaborate three-course meal. Alongside world premières of short pieces by house choreographers Richard Alston and Martin Lawrance and star company dancer Ihsaan de Banya, RADC debuted a piece by London choreographer Joseph Toonga, and rounded out the meal Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Neither the name, the look, nor the recorded sound of Perfume Genius (*****) seems like the thing to set about a packed Royal Festival Hall with shock and awe, though there was plenty of both in last night’s show. The Seattle singer, known to his mum as Mike Hadreas, has developed a cult following for his ability to combine fragility and scorching power in lyrics of intelligence and versatility. Live, he displayed extraordinary vistas of emotional and techncial breadth.Last year’s third album, Too Bright, raised both eyebrows and expectations with a much broader range of sounds and techniques Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
It is irresistible to watch Andrew Roberts, the ambitious historian of one of history's most ambitious figures, narrating a three-part account of his hero’s life and times. He is giving us a superb analysis of Napoleon Bonaparte’s gifts, flaws, insecurities and achievements. The first instalment opened with a glorious sunset over the South Atlantic, and several views of the dramatic scenery of the volcanic island of St Helena where the exiled Napoleon was held for six years, 4,000 miles from home, as the prisoner of the British, until his death in 1821 at the age of 51. We saw pivotal Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
What Wes Orshoski’s new documentary points out, above everything, is how much pop success relies on an ordered narrative and an easily understood package. First-wave British punk band The Damned, on the other hand, wrote as many great songs as their peers, but their career has been a mess of random creativity, changing line-ups and dreadful business decisions. There is a telling moment where Rat Scabies, the original drummer, weeps as he recalls the one occasion the band had all their ducks in a line. With a major label deal, solid American management, and 1985’s chart-friendly Phantasmagoria Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Connections are missed and made in Jonathan Dove’s Flight – a giddy airport fantasy of what might be and what never was. Not yet 20 years old, this contemporary score is quite a departure from Opera Holland Park’s staple fare of well-aged verismo and bloodily rare Italian drama, but in a glossy new production by Stephen Barlow it pulses with all the same urgency and human interest – and not a suicide/secret pregnancy/long-lost parent in sight.Driven by propulsive motor rhythms and percussion ticks, Dove’s score has the same slick statelessness as Andrew Riley’s designs. Here a bit of Copland Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Interceptor began as it didn’t mean to go on. A young boy of mixed race walked home through an estate and saw two men in a violent altercation. One, who was white, shot the other, who was black, presumably dead. “Dad!” called the boy. The murderer pointed the gun, realised he was aiming at his son, and scarpered.Spool forward a couple of decades. The boy, now an adult, had moved out of a gritty tragedy and into a trigger-happy comedy. Ash (OT Fagbenle) was a customs cop on the hunt for small fry in tandem with his buddy Tommy (Robert Lonsdale). Their first chase across a crowded Waterloo Read more ...