Reviews
Veronica Lee
The BBC is keen to point out to anyone who'll listen that this new political satire is not, repeat not, about Julian Assange. They'll allow that it was in part inspired by the WikiLeaks founder's situation, but any similarity between him and Dan Hern, a preening egotist who leaked official documents and sought asylum in a South American embassy in central London, is purely coincidental.That's the legalities out of the way, so what of the programme? Co-created by Kayvan Novak (of Fonejacker fame) and producer Tom Thostrup, and written by newcomers Peter Bowden and Thom Phipps, Asylum (a three- Read more ...
Matthew Wright
“Jazzerbaijan”, the giddy publicity tag attached to last night’s double bill of Azeri jazz at Ronnie Scott’s, was sounding soberly appropriate by the end of a dazzling display of generic shape-shifting by the young Isfar Sarabski Trio. A packed and exuberant audience thrilled to his sound, which seemed to transcend generic boundaries with a breath-taking lyricism and fluency. The first set, an accomplished, if perhaps more familiar sound from the Amina Figarova Sextet, had a more consistent Western focus, though Azeri music still featured in Figarova’s playing and compositions.Jazz in Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Casting existing partners is no guarantee of artistic success – for every Burton/Taylor, there is a Bennifer. Hannah Price has taken a risk, too, by pairing the revered Dame Harriet Walter with her comparatively unfamiliar American husband, Guy Paul, in Clara Brennan’s exposing two-hander. But it’s a risk worth taking, as the couple’s deep-rooted rapport lends a frisson to this stroll down memory lane.It’s 30 years since their first meeting, and troubled transatlantic lovers Louis (Paul) and Boa (Walter) are interrogating their shared history to uncover truths. The couple (pictured below) Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Cynical writer Macaulay Connor (Jimmy Stewart) and pragmatic photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) are the tabloid team charged with getting the undercover scoop on the society wedding of the year, between old-moneyed Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) and a self-made industrialist. Their way into the party: Tracy’s ex-husband, CK Dexter Haven (Cary Grant). Will Tracy actually marry a social-climbing stiff, or fall for the angry young reporter with an unnatural capacity for champagne? Will Dexter be able to turn the tables on Spy magazine’s diabolical editor? And why can’t we all dress like Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Finally the moment the Breaking Bad diaspora has been waiting for, with the arrival of Vince Gilligan's new show about the earlier career of New Mexico's least scrupulous lawyer, Saul Goodman. Mind you, the title is a little bit misleading, because Saul doesn't exist yet. In this incarnation, he's still just a hustling low-life called Jimmy McGill, a man who never knowingly leaves any barrel unscraped.Goodman was often used as light relief in Breaking Bad, providing interludes of comic sleaze amid the remorseless descent into moral darkness, but here we must, perforce, get a fuller sense of Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Andris Nelsons is flavour of the month in London. He is in town to conduct The Flying Dutchman at Covent Garden, but between performances he is moonlighting at the Festival Hall, giving two concerts with the Philharmonia. This, the first, opened with a serviceable Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 from Paul Lewis, and concluded with a Bruckner Third Symphony that was in a different league entirely.The orchestra was reduced for the Mozart, though still large for the repertoire. Nelsons and Lewis have a curious working relationship, the conductor pushing for more expression and phrase shaping than Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This almost-no-budget feature by writer/director James Ward Byrkit was created by gathering eight of his actor-friends in his Santa Monica living room, and giving each of them a daily page of notes about their character on which to base their improvised performance. Five nights of shooting gave Byrkit enough material for the finished product, but questions must be asked about whether the process justified the flick's 88 minute running time.Coherence resembles a postgrad science project masquerading as drama. Byrkit's aim was to explore the theoretical notion of parallel universes and Read more ...
David Nice
After seven glorious Welsh National Opera performances in the summer of 2010, it looked like curtains for Richard Jones’s Mastersingers (or Meistersinger, as it then was, sung in German): no DVD, no co-productions. The director seemed happy with that, as philosophical as Wagner's operatic characterisation of 16th-century cobbler-mastersinger Hans Sachs. Such, he implied, was the ephemeral nature of the true theatrical experience, rare at a time when nearly everything gets documented. Now that a syndicate of passionate Wagnerians has helped to bring it back against all odds, even those who Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The Orange Tree’s renaissance continues with this searing piece from playwright of the moment Alice Birch, who will shortly follow up last year’s subversive Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again with an interrogation of the porn industry for Rufus Norris’s debut National season. Her fearlessness is also in evidence in deceptive early work Little Light, an initially typical domestic drama that furiously erupts in a bruising, bravura 90 minutes.The beachside converted barn of Teddy (Paul Rattray) and Alison (Lorna Brown) is the setting for an annual Sunday lunch ruled by ritual, but this year is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This concert is called My Life in Music and the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone seems determined to take us on a journey from his origins in Italian B pictures to inarguable and gigantic orchestral opulence. In the 1960s he put together iconic and resonant music on a tight budget, with limited ensembles and quirky instrumentation. These made his name, along with that of the director Sergio Leone. Tonight, clad in black, wearing a polo-neck, conducting the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and a mighty choir, he revels in hugeness. Now 86, this is Morricone’s rescheduled global tour, Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The Associates is not the title of a new Scandi crime drama, though in dance world terms we’re perhaps approaching that level of Event. Associates are what Sadler’s Wells, London’s dance powerhouse, calls the selected band of dancemakers it deems serioulsy interesting, and worth co-commissioning. Last night’s show featured the work of three superficially rather different Associates, with premières from hip-hop maestra Kate Prince and provocative Israeli Hofesh Shechter, and a restaged duet from the back catalogue of cerebral Canadian Crystal Pite. With the kind of serendipity which must Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Martin Hannett & Steve Hopkins: The Invisible GirlsWhile acclaimed for his glacial productions for Joy Division and New Order, Martin Hannett was also a musician in his own right. With bass guitar in hand and alongside composer-keyboard player Steve Hopkins, the duo recorded as The Invisible Girls. Under that name, they provided music for albums by John Cooper-Clarke, ex-Penetration singer Pauline Murray and provided a sonic bed for Nico. They also contributed to Hannett-produced records by Durutti Column and Jilted John.The Invisible Girls celebrates a more under-the-radar Read more ...