Reviews
Katherine McLaughlin
The burden of responsibility weighs heavily on a young man struggling to deal with his mother’s alcoholism, in Gerard Barrett’s powerful and poignant second feature. Jack Reynor, who so impressed in Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did, turns in a nuanced and moving performance as a son driven to desperate measures in order to survive. Barrett empathises how difficult it can be to get by when you don’t have a regular income, or indeed plentiful cash to throw at your problems.John (Reynor, pictured below) is at a crossroads in his life. Does he continue driving a taxi in the village where he Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Composer Tansy Davies and librettist Nick Drake’s opera Between Worlds cannot help but be a devastating tribute to the tragedy of 9/11. Yet the whole is peppered with problems that mean this result is achieved only intermittently. Davies – whose first opera this is – and the playwright Drake, with Deborah Warner directing, have picked a topic that would seem at first glance to demand the scale of a modern-day Götterdämmerung. The result they extrapolate is far from that – but when it does succeed, it is in ways that are not really about 9/11 at all.This is, essentially, the final section, in Read more ...
Sarah Kent
At 86, Jo Baer is still painting vigorously. In the mid 1960s, she was an established New York Minimalist along with artists like Carl Andre and Sol Lewitt; but while they continued to explore abstraction, she changed tack – dramatically, or so it seemed. In the mid 1970s, she turned toward figuration declaring that the “naivety” of Minimalism (its refusal to engage with events in the real world) no longer made it relevant. Yet she still thinks of herself as an abstract painter and this survey, which spans 55 years, allows us to guage what she means by the claim.In the early days, her Read more ...
geoff brown
Considering the possibilities, we got off lightly when the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, always fearless in the face of the outrageous, performed Percy Grainger’s “music for an imaginary ballet”, The Warriors. The orchestra could have contained 30 pianists seated at 19 pianos, a prescription once followed when Grainger, the Australian wild boy of music, conducted it in concert in Chicago. In fact, we had just three of each.We could also have had the ballet staged. In which case, following Grainger’s imaginings, the already bursting Festival Hall stage would be wriggling with what Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
David Kauffman and Eric Caboor: Songs From Suicide BridgeThe tale of David Kauffman and Eric Caboor is not unusual. Two singer-songwriters form a duo, play some live shows to zero interest, record an album which goes nowhere after it’s privately pressed and then – nothing. Kauffman and Caboor though recorded a gem which, in terms of its haunting mood and quality of songwriting, belies its obscurity. Songs From Suicide Bridge, which was barely released in 1984, is as good as James Taylor at his most naked, and as evocative as Elliott Smith. The album sounds as if it could have been Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Drenge made themselves known to the world some 18 months ago, surfing on the back of their abrasive self-titled debut album and some unexpected PR assistance from West Midlands MP Tom Watson. Back then, the Loveless brothers were a loud and lairy duo that took rock music by the scruff of the neck and knocked seven bells out of it with their stripped-down sound. With the recent release of their second album, Undertow, however, there have been some changes. Most noticeably, their sound has got richer and considerably grungier, while a bass player has been added to the line-up. However, given Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
I’ve got no idea what the opposite of dumbing down might be. Swatting up? Whatever it is, it’s surely going to set the tone for the next couple of Friday nights on BBC Two, where Sex and the Church is as erudite a piece of television as we’re going to get in a long time. The fact that it’s on Two, which was home to presenter Diarmaid MacCulloch’s previous series A History of Christianity and How God Made the English, further encourages: this new one would certainly have fitted in on BBC Four, so it must have been past ratings that have kept MacCulloch on the senior channel.I confess I’d never Read more ...
David Nice
It was melody versus the machine last night as Sakari Oramo’s six voyages around the Nielsen symphonies with the BBC Symphony Orchestra hit the high noon of the 1920s. The fallout from the First World War found three composers scarred but fighting fit. Prokofiev seemed less than his essential insouciant self in a Third Piano Concerto of more than usual bizarreries, and it was twice through the human meat grinder for the Viennese of Ravel’s La Valse and his Spanish proletarians in Boléro. The bookending made programmatic sense but in the end proved one work too many, exhausting for both Read more ...
Mark Sheerin
MK Gallery has a knack for showcasing mid-career artists before any other public space and this is Ellen Altfest’s first survey in the UK. There are 22 paintings here which, given their demands on her time, represent a significant proportion of the 44-year old’s output to date. Most of the pieces come from private collections, representing her commercial success with White Cube. And while the blue chip gallery showed her in the modest setting of Hoxton Square, these works couldn’t be further from the epic installations which appear to characterise the gallery’s new space in Bermondsey. Read more ...
emma.simmonds
This shrewdly assembled, often near-monochrome actioner injects pathos from the off and mirrors the melancholic outlook of its grief-ravaged protagonist, played by Keanu Reeves, who dials down the befuddlement and proves rather endearing. Directed by stuntmen Chad Stahelski and (an uncredited) David Leitch, it's a lovingly crafted, pleasingly characterful effort that delivers impactful, imaginatively executed thrills.Even if you're not an animal lover, John Wick has a crafty way of pulling at the heart strings, demonstrating a simultaneous flair for manipulation and restraint. It opens with Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
Some dramas begin with a brilliant idea. April De Angelis’s new black comedy, After Electra, is one of these. It starts with an audacious premise: the octogenarian artist Virgie is celebrating her birthday in her abode on the Essex coast, and invites family and close friends to join her. So far so normal. Then, as they assemble, she drops a bombshell. She tells them that she has decided to commit suicide. She’s had enough of life, and, dreading the numerous indignities of old age, wants to end it all.How do Virgie’s guests react? Her fiftysomething daughter, Hadyn, ironically a bereavement Read more ...
Simon Munk
"Just one more thing…" What is it about great detective fiction in film and books that defies replication in videogames? You'd think that videogames would be ideal for whodunits. But the best mysteries in games (see Grim Fandango) roam far from simple murder. And the games that most closely ape the policier – like L.A. Noire – tend to take an unhappy tumble into the "uncanny valley".In L.A. Noire it was the supposed "tells" suspects gave under interrogation that marked the game down – with some suspects proving infuriatingly odd-looking and twitchy even when telling the truth, while others Read more ...