Brexit
Graham Fuller
Imagine Cristiano Ronaldo, virtuosity intact, as buffed, blinged, and coiffed as ever, but with the sophistication and sexual maturity of an average seven-year-old, and you have a fair idea of Diamantino’s protagonist.If that sounds like this barmy Portuguese satire trashes the nation’s sleek football idol, it’s not quite the case. Yes, Diamantino Matamouros (Carloto Cotta, main picture) sees giant fluffy puppies frolicking in pink clouds when he dribbles toward the opposition goal, plus his duvet cover bears his image, but he dotes on both his old dad and his black kitten Mittens, and he has Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Flight is a show by experimental Scottish theatre company Vox Motus, adapted from the novel Hinterland by Caroline Brothers. It’s about two Afghan child refugees making their way across Europe to the fabled land of “London” and is based very directly on her own interviews with asylum seekers as a journalist. So far, so narrartively straightforward but Flight is unlike anything most people will have seen. It is as much art installation as it is theatre, perhaps more so, yet it’s a tale beautifully, economically told and is profoundly moving.In a recent artsdesk interview Candice Edmunds, one Read more ...
David Nice
Forty years ago this July, Simone Veil gave her inaugural speech as first President of the European Parliament. She had many issues to include. Peace came first; as a survivor of Auschwitz and the "death march" just before liberation, she well understood why "our Assembly has, whatever its differences, a fundamental responsibility" to maintain it. She also saw the difficulties ahead in holding the centre of European solidarity over and above the immediate national concerns of the Union's members. Austrian Robert Menasse's novel is the first I've read to bring to life the complexity of such a Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s always interesting to see how presenters make their presence known in documentaries. Louis Theroux hovers on the sidelines like an ethereal presence, Stacey Dooley connects immediately on an emotional level, and one-time host Keith Allen handled proceedings like a fight before a Millwall game. Alice Levine wasn’t the most obvious choice to tackle the rise of the far right; she’s best known for her work on Radio 1 and comedy podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno. In her first foray into TV journalism, there was some promising headway but her inexperience ultimately shone through.Levine is Read more ...
Heather Neill
Here's a recipe for a successful National Theatre production: take a well-loved classical comedy, employ an outstanding young director and a talented writer (so much the better if they have a proven track record together) and cast gold-standard actors, including, if possible, someone with a screen presence. What could possibly go wrong? Well, unfortunately, just such a promising mix fails to gel in Tartuffe. Director Blanche McIntyre and John Donnelly were responsible for a well-regarded tour of The Seagull in 2013, while favourite actors Olivia Williams, Kevin Doyle and Susan Engel are among Read more ...
Tim Cornwell
Breathe in the love and breathe out the bullshit. After the Arcola Theatre's founder and artistic director Mehmet Ergen read Keith? A Comedy, a wild spin on the quasi-ubiquitous (these days, anyway) Tartuffe by the critic and writer Patrick Marmion, the theatre moved to cast and stage the play in a matter of weeks. Fresh and timely is the result. Marmion's central couple Morgan and Veena are your archetypally idiosyncratic North London family in the age of Corbyn. Morgan is a reformed hedonist who made a fortune from a start-up pocket-money app; Veena, an Anglo-Asian Professor of Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Is there a connection between revolution and theatre? The answer has to be yes – a visceral one. The supremacy of symbols, the collective strength of a crowd, a sense that some kind of pressure valve is being released to challenge the dominant social narrative. The Ancient Greeks understood this – it was from such impulses that theatre had its birth. So how does that work amid the populist turbulence of the twenty-first century?Counting Sheep explodes on London’s theatre fringe scene with rave reviews from Edinburgh about its recreation of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. For a Brexit-broken Read more ...
Jasper Rees
One day this all will be over. Give it half a century. In 50 years' time, there will be documentaries in which today’s young, by then old, will explain to generations yet unborn exactly how and why Britain went round the twist in 2016. Much as we now watch re-runs of Cathy Come Home, there will also be screenings of Brexit: The Uncivil War (Channel 4) and Sir James Graham, probably still looking like a freshly scrubbed teenager, will give interviews about how he finessed into 90 minutes the story of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.But that is to come. Here we are now, freshly Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
In the days around WOMAD there have been plenty of media about how the “hostile environment” towards migrants has created all sorts of problems for artists attempting to get here from around the world. Certainly, we are being denied some of the hottest new acts - like the wild blue-haired Moonchild Sanelly from South Africa or the hottest new act from Nigeria, Chicoco Sounds. WOMAD have just signed a new 12-year deal at Charlton Park, however - and if you wanted to find the spiritual centre for the liberal, tolerant, positive globalism currently under threat, WOMAD would be a Read more ...
David Kettle
Writer and director David Nicholas Wilkinson felt moved to make his reflective, rather melancholy documentary on the 48% who voted to remain in the EU, he says, because nobody else was making one. When it came to funding the project, not a single Brit would invest (though he has German and Irish backers) – potential supporters were apparently too nervous of their names getting out.Have the values of Remain already become so ignored and so – well, unacceptable? Possibly. Which, of course, makes it all the more crucial that Wilkinson has provided Remainers with this platform to present their Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Annual lists of the richest, the most powerful, the movers and shakers, have an awful fascination: like gossip, we like to look and comment while feeling slightly morally compromised. But they also have a function as a snapshot of where we are at. This time it’s the turn of the art world’s most influential figures, as chosen by the magazine ArtReview, which each year creates a talking point for itself replete with embargoes and PR. After topping last year’s list the very busy Hans Ulrich Olbrist (picture below right), creative force at the Serpentine Galleries, finds himself at number Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Immigration…immigration… immigration… that’s what we need! Not the words of record-breaking, tap-dancing trumpeter Roy Castle, rather it’s the gist of a Times leader from 1853 (admittedly, fairly heavily paraphrased). It was just one of the eye-opening discoveries in Ian Hislop’s engaging BBC Two documentary about the birth of one of the most divisive political issues of the last 100 years, as he looked at surprising historical pinch points and used them to shed light on their future shocks.Britain’s open-door policy in the mid-19th century was, we were told, an issue of moral importance. For Read more ...