Reviews
graham.rickson
Malcolm Arnold: Symphonies 1-9 London Symphony Orchestra/Richard Hickox, BBC Philharmonic/Rumon Gamba (Chandos)Malcolm Arnold's lasting reputation as a chameleonic comedian endures, though his more overtly serious cycle of nine symphonies shouldn't be overlooked. They span his compositional career – the bracing, bold No. 1 written in 1949, the alarming, sepulchral 9th completed in 1986. They exist in a very British parallel musical universe, miles from the European avant-garde. But Arnold wasn't an insular composer; these symphonies make overt reference to Berlioz, Sibelius, Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Joss Whedon’s Avengers sequel loses much of the original’s exhilarating freshness. It begins in the middle, doesn’t really end, and regularly makes you wonder just how long the Marvel box-office bonanza can continue. The moment when its Cinema Universe’s exponentially growing complexity slams into entropic reverse, as happened to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original comic-book vision, is plainly visible on the horizon.The franchise’s triumph is that its army of highly skilled and humane artists such as Whedon have kept these witty, nimble blockbusters away from that black hole as long as they Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Time was when a Boulez concert with the LSO would have been directed by the man himself, but that is no longer possible. In Peter Eötvös they have the next best thing, a conductor who has known the man and his music for decades, whose listening ear is scarcely less acute and whose most recent appearance wth the LSO, in Lachenmann and Brahms with Maurizio Pollini, made quite miraculous music from intensive rehearsal. It was evident that similar care had gone into the preparation of orchestral rites by Stravinsky and Boulez, preceded by the Livre pour cordes which the French composer fashioned Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The trouble with the general election is that while everybody talks about money, nobody talks about ideas. We know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. This might seem to be a triumphant demonstration of the essential pragmatism of the nation, yet there was a time in English history when ideas mattered. And when they were passionately discussed, and bitterly fought over. I’m referring to the English Civil War of the 1640s, and its aftermath when king Charles I was beheaded, an era explored by Caryl Churchill in her 1976 docudrama.Now revived in a large-scale production by Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Should the BBC take the piss out of itself? Of course we must all laugh at our own failings, but the function of satire is to laser in on the faults of others for comedic ends. Isn’t it? The satirist's task is to point the finger elsewhere. Juvenal and Swift and Hislop don’t get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “Christ, I’m hilariously bad at what I do. I must tell the world.”So what are we to make of W1A? John Morton, the great anthropologist of Planet Lanyard, was granted permission to do to the BBC what he had done to the organisation of the London Olympics. But where Twenty Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
I do wish that arts institutions would stop using the word “immersive” when they simply mean “staged”. Just to be clear, there is nothing “immersive” about Netia Jones’s new staging of Georg Friedrich Haas's song-cycle ATTHIS at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio, whatever the blurb may say. The director’s signature video projections, dance, song and music, come together to create an exquisite, hypnotic piece of very traditional theatre – not a promenade or a broken fourth wall in sight. And it’s all the better for it.Last seen taking over the Barbican for the psychedelic fantasy of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Panti Bliss is not a name on many people's lips outside Ireland, but over the past year she has gone from little-known club performer to self-described “accidental activist”, and this utterly charming, funny and touching show tells her story.Panti (aka Rory O'Neill) is a drag artist who runs her own club in Dublin. Early last year she appeared on a chat show on Irish national broadcaster RTE, during which she made some innocuous remarks about people campaigning against equal marriage, calling them homophobic. The parties sued, RTE cravenly gave in and paid damages, but a national debate was Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Normally if you throw together three genres of videogame, the result is a mess. The Quest Keeper however, is a curious mashup of endless runner (think Temple Run), roguelike dungeon crawl and - of all things - free to play, time-eating Frogger clone, Crossy Road that works.You play an intrepid adventurer who must navigate a series of dungeons to retrieve magical artifacts, dodging traps and walking across perilous pathways over stygian depths. A standard adventure, then. The catch is that once you start walking, you can't stop unless you hit an obstacle.You can swipe the screen to change Read more ...
Marianka Swain
“Fury Over Sharia Law For Toddlers!” No, not a prime example of spoof headline generator Daily Mail-o-matic, but the latest piece of fantastical scaremongering from the Clarion, a 125-year-old (semi-)fictional rag that’s upped sales by splashing on immigration every day for a year. Editor Morris (Greg Hicks) argues his “issues-led” paper upholds the proud tradition of “combative” British journalism, but his tactic of selling sensationalist speculation as news backfires when one reader interprets it as a literal call to arms – and liberal nemesis the Sentinel may have the scoop.Debut Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A band are doing well if they have their audience laughing and cheering before they’ve even hit the stage. Such is the case with Public Service Broadcasting who show a creaky public information-style animation, with a distinct 1970s feel, prior to their appearance. In it we’re presented with Calman-esque cartoons Ralph and Geoffrey who each have contrasting approaches to using their mobile phones at concerts. Suffice to say things don’t end well for Geoffrey, who spends the whole concert waving his iPhone about taking dodgy blurred footage and getting in everyone’s way. Regular concert-goers Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence induces reflections on the nature of existence, the resultant mood could initially be very glum indeed. Swedish director Roy Andersson’s meditation is the self-declared “final part of a trilogy about being a human being”. It opens with three vignettes focusing on unexpected deaths and is, overall, grey in tenor. It is also, though, laced with humour and a very precise eye for changes of mood, the subtle differences between each of us and the tenderness which can bond even those who seem directly opposed to each other.A Pigeon Sat on a Read more ...
David Nice
Poised vibrantly enough between the buried-alive monotony of Philip Glass and the dynamic flights of John Adams, Steve Reich’s Three Tales deserves a special place in music-theatre history ("opera" it is not). Ironically, since it deals with the two-edged sword of the 20th century’s major scientific developments, the video work with which the music interacts so brilliantly – by Reich’s former wife and long-term collaborator Beryl Korot – has been left looking a bit dated by rapid progress in that field since its 2002 premiere.Besides, after the pioneering speech-melodies of Different Trains Read more ...