You might think the spy thriller is a genre which has been worn out and abused to death, but this second series of The Agency is here to tell you otherwise. Once again penned by the prolific Butterworth brothers Jez and John-Henry, it brings us back to the CIA London station helmed by the laconic Bosko (Richard Gere) and his morose and curmudgeonly deputy Henry Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright).The star turn among their agents is the man codenamed Martian (Michael Fassbender), who remains haunted by his love affair with Sudanese anthropologist Sami Zahir (Jodie Turner-Swift, pictured below with Read more ...

The Royal Northern College of Music put four of its brightest hopes on show in last night’s big end-of-year concert at the Bridgewater Hall – a composer, a conductor, a solo pianist… and everyone else in its symphony orchestra and chorus.To that please add the conductor, Clemens Schuldt, whose exuberance and affinity with the young musicians made the performance a thing of distinction and emotional impact on a level rarely reached in even the most experienced hands.Schuldt began his programme with a short piece that had “conductor’s choice” written all over it – Ophélie, by Mel Bonis.   Read more ...

Ben Ockrent’s Relics had me hooked from the moment the safety curtain started rising: a metal number with a banner of packing tape marked FRAGILE on it. As it rose, the teddy bear that had been lying in front of it was silhouetted, hanging from it by one arm.It’s not just a cute opener. Director Michael Longhurst and his designer, Joanna Scotcher, are projecting the core of the piece with minimum means. Things in this house are fragile. And when nerdy Rob (Sam Swainsbury, pictured bottom) appears, this mini-prelude is rounded out as he silently and warily, like a kid doing something naughty, Read more ...

If screwball noir is a subgenre (encompassing Something Wild,  Fargo, The Long  Kiss Goodnight,  Wild at Heart, After Hours), then Anders Thomas Jensen is its Danish proponent.  The Last Viking is a highwire act in which throwaway comic barbs delivered at a clip are interrupted by brutal violence, ostensibly with the aim of keeping the audience ricocheting between laughs and gasps.  Whether it works here is another question, but it looks like the cast, most of whom have worked with Jensen before and will be familiar to fans of Scandinavian cinema, were having a very Read more ...

The erotic life of puppets – we discover in this show – is filled with intriguing possibilities that are denied to mere flesh and blood lovers. They can float up into the air when they kiss, glide backwards if they’re upset, and perform acrobatics that would be ambitious even for devotees of the Kama Sutra. In this revival of Greg Doran’s wonderful production – first devised in collaboration with Islington’s Little Angel Puppet Theatre in 2004 – such attributes do not divide them from the human experience but provide a wittily alternative expression of love’s highs and lows. In effect, Read more ...

We are bowled over! We knew that theartsdesk.com had plenty of supporters out there – we’ve always had a loyal readership of arts lovers and professionals alike – but the response to our appeal to help us relaunch and reboot has been something else.Our fundraiser is rolling towards hitting the halfway mark, and it’s already raised enough to repair our ageing site and ensure its survival. But just as important to all of us have been the messages of love and support from our readership. It’s not just the morale boost of being praised either – though let’s be honest, the warm glow is pretty Read more ...

Language is a weapon in the RSC’s vigorous adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac ­– we feel viscerally that wordplay is just one letter away from swordplay, and verbal discord can result in death. Co-adaptor Debris Stevenson cut her teeth on the Grime poetry scene, and brings a raw, abrasive energy to this love story for word nerds that transforms poets into warriors as Cyrano strives for the survival of the wittiest.  Jamie Lloyd’s production of Martin Crimp’s rap battle-style Cyrano de Bergerac seven years ago felt definitive, yet this Cyrano more than holds its own. It’s proof once Read more ...

Terrorists are monsters. Or so we are told – pure evil. Well, it makes a good story. Even if it isn’t completely true. Actually, most political assassins are quite ordinary young men, often troubled, often vulnerable, unsure of themselves and so prone to being led by others. American playwright Rajiv Joseph takes this insight and applies it to the Serb terrorists whose actions precipitated the First World War. First staged in New York in November last year, this wild dark comedy is now on the Royal Court’s main stage in a fizzing, occasionally eye-popping, production by director Lyndsey Read more ...

Modesty is the last refuge of fantasy franchises once too big to fail. Much like The Mandalorian and Grogu and Captain America: Brave New World, Supergirl is a scaled-back sf story with minor-league villains and a manageable quest. Two films into James Gunn’s DC Extended Universe reboot, it already feels like a fill-in.It’s still a long way from last orders in the pub crawl glimpsed when Kara Zor-El/Supergirl (Milly Alcock) cameoed in Superman as she continues her interstellar 23rd birthday party. The cousin of Kal-El/Superman (David Corenswet) is more like his surly kid sister, exasperated Read more ...

“Keys to Your Heart,” the only single by Joe Strummer’s pre-Clash band The 101’ers, was released on 27 June 1976 – 50 years ago this week.Fantastic and still vital, “Keys to Your Heart” is a driving pop-rocker with a Sixties feel. It edges towards powerpop. But the urgency of delivery and its raggedness mark it out as broadly telegraphing what was around the corner with British punk rock. And its mid section, with Strummer's testifying, presages a fundamental element of the make-up of The Clash. An important single.The anniversary is neat prompt to consider the band’s musical legacy: what Read more ...

Post-Covid British theatre has a crush on adaptations, especially those with a star actor. So it’s easy to see why National Theatre chief Indhu Rubasingham is staging the latest sparkling verse play by Martin Crimp, whose electric version of Cyrano de Bergerac with James McAvoy conquered the West End in 2019. This time Crimp revisits Molière’s 1666 masterpiece, The Misanthrope, with Canadian superstar Sandra Oh taking on the main role, her terrific performance turning the original’s Alceste into a very contemporary Alice – I couldn’t take my eyes off her.Oh’s character, a Booker-Prize-winning Read more ...

French playwright Florian Zeller’s 2011 four-hander about infidelity and the deceptions it entails, translated by Christopher Hampton, returns 10 years after its UK premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory. A lot has changed in the personal communications world since its debut, but the play soldiers on with just a few appearances by early mobiles and no sign of social media.Does that matter? It makes the play something of a period piece, but its illicit liaisons are not dependent on technology. And at its heart is not so much deception as self-deception and the language we use to blank it out Read more ...