Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Bridget St. John: Dandelion Albums & BBC CollectionPigeonholing Bridget St. John is gratifyingly difficult. Although generally categorised as folk, her early albums actually posited her as a singer-songwriter following her own path. Like her similarly restrained contemporary Nick Drake, she did not have a background in folk clubs. And also like him, her voice was huskily intimate. Her intonation was very English, yet there was a hint of Nico’s Teutonic drama.There was no traditional material in St. John’s repertoire, but she did cover Donovan. Buddy Holly too. She also interpreted Read more ...
Thomas Rees
Jazz and politics go way back. Throughout its history the music has been involved with underground resistance movements in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. It was inextricably entwined with civil rights campaigns in the United States and it played a part in the struggle against South African apartheid. In 2012, a host of jazz heavyweights (among them Roy Haynes and Joe Lovano) came out in support of Barack Obama in the run up to the US elections and it was that event that provided the inspiration for last night’s Barbican spectacular, Jazz For Labour: A Concert For Fairness and Diversity, Read more ...
Florence Hallett
The sight of two old women fighting in the street would probably meet with roughly the same response from passers-by whether it happened today or 200 years ago – a queasy mixture of dismay, embarrassment and amusement. To get close to Goya’s drawing of two ancient crones locked in a wrestlers’ embrace, their toothless faces both grimly determined, is to experience those uneasy sensations just as he surely did. As so often in this exhibition, in a fanciful moment you can almost feel the presence of the artist at your side, conjured up through the vivacity and pertinence of his observations.Old Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
There's a whole fairytale backstory to be told here. The residents of Saffron Walden and the surrounding area still can't quite believe their good fortune. The North Essex town and its state secondary school have been gifted a new 730-seat concert hall with a fine acoustic by a philanthropist with twin passions for state education and classical music.The hall's run of good fortune has continued, right up to this concert, arguably its biggest coup to date. The hall's manager Angela Dixon had managed to book Nicola Benedetti for just one performance, and when all the tickets for the violinist's Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The oldies are back at Jaipur's Marigold Hotel and they're looking like goodies, too, thanks to a British dame or two and an Ol Parker script that knows when to leave off the breeziness and let the occasional intimation of mortality hold sway. And in a celluloid landscape plagued by sequelitis, the fact that a collective of British pensioners and their newfound Indian chums have been brought back for more is itself rather bracing compared to the usual spate of avengers, transformers or what not that keep most film franchises going.The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel's 2012 predecessor Read more ...
stephen.walsh
You might imagine that composers in general would write songs. On my way to the BCMG’s programme of pieces from the songbook assembled by John Woolrich and Mary Wiegold for the Composers’ Ensemble 30-odd years ago, I tried and failed to think of a significant 19-century composer who didn’t write songs. But in the 20th century song seems to have become a dirty word, associated with mere popularist geniuses like Gershwin, Irving Berlin and John Lennon, then grafted back on to “classical” (as opposed to “music”) as a CD track label. “Serious” modern composers, it turns out, have to be more Read more ...
Marianka Swain
How do we respond to a tragedy of infinite mystery? We investigate, we speculate, and we seek to impose meaning, to produce a story that safely contains unfathomable horror. However, those hoping for such reassurance via a traditional theatrical narrative in Bush Moukarzel and Dead Centre’s Lippy will come away disappointed. This darkly absurdist piece floats searching, fundamental questions, but answers came there none.Fifteen years ago, in the small Irish town of Leixlip, police discovered the bodies of 83-three-old Frances Mulrooney (Joanna Banks) and her three nieces, Catherine (Eileen Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Recent attitudes to Victorian Britain have changed radically. The popular view used to be of a period filled with a kind of smug imperial confidence, underwritten by the increasing wealth of the industrial age. This ingrained assumption was perhaps epitomised by Lytton Strachey’s 1918 Eminent Victorians, which saw the eminences as bungling hypocrites. And although secret lives might have been as wild as may be, one characteristic myth was that even piano legs had to be obscured with frilly covers for decency. This simplistic summary was leavened by acknowledging geniuses from Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
When Purcell died at just 36, he left The Indian Queen unfinished, which only adds to the usual problems of staging his "semi-operas" – plays with musical interludes which don’t really accord with modern operatic tastes, despite the ravishing beauty of the music itself.Rather than tinkering around the edges, Peter Sellars – the director best known for his long-standing partnership with John Adams – has created a new piece entirely. Its narrated plot, borrowed from Nicaraguan novelist Rosario Aguilar's The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma, is set around a particularly savage episode in the Read more ...
Simon Munk
A shambling corpse, desperately gouging anything that comes near it for sustenance, a shadow of its former self. I'm not talking of the zombies that infest this game, but the Resident Evil series itself and its iconic Japanese publisher Capcom.For those not familiar with the Resident Evil series, this wildly successful set of games jump-started the "survival horror" genre in 1996, and has since spawned an army of spin-off game titles and films, while the main series has mutated – from slow-paced adventure to high-speed action.The original Revelations saw the game broken into TV-style " Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With a similar title to Samuel Fuller’s White Dog, White God, too, is an allegory on racism with a canine slant. Where the 1982 film centred on a dog trained to attack black people, Kornél Mundruczó’s film is set in a Hungary where mixed-breed dogs are rounded up and sent to pounds. An edict from a government which is neither mentioned specifically nor seen, permits only pure “Hungarian” breeds. Mutts have to be reported.In the main, society appears to accept this. Dog catchers in white vans roam Budapest’s streets to round up the forbidden mongrels. Neighbours report on each other if they Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
How do you take your rom-coms? Full-fat Hollywood schmaltz, Shakespearean, or lean and elegant – a Stoppard perhaps, or Coward? If your answer did not include “With lashings of social philosophy, ethics and a lengthy dream sequence, preferably running north of three hours”, then Man and Superman might not be the play for you. For those who prefer things quick and contemporary there’s Closer up the road at the Donmar, but for anyone prepared to take a risk with an Edwardian oddity – a baggy, generous, thinks-faster-than-it-can-talk comedy – Shaw still has plenty to say.At full length, George Read more ...