Reviews
Marianka Swain
The Langham has marked its 150th anniversary in theatrical fashion by commissioning an original drama spanning several decades – and floors – from emerging company Defibrillator, whose Tennessee Williams trio at this venue impressed last year. Now Ben Ellis checks in with a tailored play that gains substance the further it reaches into the past.The first of Ellis’s three half-hour two-handers is the weakest, offering a tired spin on the needy pop diva. It’s present day – as multiple references to Twitter and Instagram make clear – and imploding singer Jade (Hannah Spearritt), due to make a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Did you know there's a heated debate going on about “hot stampers”? As the resurgence in vinyl continues, there are those who wish to attribute value to their own knowledge and to their vinyl collections. In the e-consumer trenches, where audiophiles heatedly discuss purchasing and repurchasing classic albums, there’s been much debate about major label reproductions from digital masters, about how they lose the richness of the originals. On the other hand, finding a “hot stamper”, a version cut early in the album’s pressing run, when the metal stamp from which it was imprinted was fresh, is Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Last year the London stage was treated to an electrifying Medea and an intelligent, refreshing Electra, at The National and the Old Vic respectively. Now it’s the turn of the Barbican to unleash the formidable force of Greek tragedy upon us, switching from Euripedes to Sophocles and a heroine who, compared to those others, is a pure-hearted innocent.And how does the production compare? Favourably. In fact, Belgian director Ivo van Hove has offered a modern-dress interpretation as thrilling as his take on Miller’s A View From The Bridge, currently playing across town. It’s elegantly staged, Read more ...
emma.simmonds
An innocent is corrupted in South African director Neill's Blomkamp's third feature (co-written with his wife Terri Tatchell), but the kid in question is far from what you'd expect. Set in the near future, it focuses on a reprogrammed police robot with the consciousness, sensitivity and suggestibility of a child - a lovably tatty piece of tech who has been literally labelled a reject, and who sports bunny ears, graffiti and gangster bling.Based on Blomkamp's 2004 short Tetra Vaal and located in his home-town of Johannesburg, Chappie focuses on Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) the lead developer at a Read more ...
fisun.guner
The unveiling of the Fourth Plinth has, since his election to office, been an opportunity for Mayor Boris Johnson to work the press pen with a comic turn. So, the commission, sponsored by the mayoral office, gets a media-chummy spokesperson whose art critiques add a note of gaiety to proceedings, even if they’re self-evidently at odds with what the artist had in mind. See them as an ongoing election campaign. Hans Haacke’s Gift Horse, which was unveiled yesterday, is a larger than life-size bronze skeleton of a horse, modelled on an anatomic etching by George Stubbs, the 18th-century Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Another tough night in with Jimmy McGovern. Banished may have taken ship to 18th-century New South Wales, whither the first British convicts have been expelled to a penal colony guarded by red-coated soldiers. But peer past the uniforms, the rifles and the tricorn hats and we have been lured yet again to McGovern’s favourite hangout, stuck somewhere between a rock and a hard place.And this Australia is a very hard place. The sun may shine on a glinting azure sea, but there isn’t enough grub to go round, seeding routine theft of rations and mistrust among the convicts. Meanwhile the women, who Read more ...
Katie Colombus
For the headliners of the Women Of The World Festival at London's Southbank Centre, there is less feisty feminism put on for show than you might expect. It's a nod to how far things have progressed - that other than the obligiatory thanksgiving for "being a loud woman on a stage of loud women plus a man who loves women", it's strength of self belief in the artists of tUnE-yArDs that lets us know what they believe in - and it's truly inspiring. It's testament to their credence that they are this strong in themselves, their musical talents, their creativity and their confidence to be able to Read more ...
David Nice
Shock and Shakespeare were the two forces that powered a typically thoughtful programme from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. I said as much in a pre-performance talk where the links weren’t hard to find: that also means coming clean at the start about my involvement. But the world needs to know about this one. With no intention to write about the event, I found myself too astonished to keep quiet by the brilliant work of Brazilian Carlos Miguel Prieto, a conductor I haven’t encountered before, and struck afresh by the top-notch invention in James MacMillan’s The Berserking, now 25 years Read more ...
Simon Munk
Skateboarding, in games and in movies, has always been presented as quite a laidback sport. This couldn't be further from that idea – it's a "twitch" arcade stick-and-button mangler that adeptly balances risk and reward and will wring hardened players for beads of sweat.Like the original, its name an apparent mangling of the skateboarding term for a jump, "Ollie", and perhaps the cycling spectator's imperative "Allez! Allez!", OlliOlli 2 is a side-scrolling arcade blast. Your diminutive skater speeds through levels covered in increasingly unlikely hazards, the concept being you're ripping Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Adolescence, youth culture and rebellion – often luridly and violently expressed – are the stocks in trade of American director Gregg Araki, who has one of the most distinctive voices in US cinema. But while Araki’s work has tended to exist on the fringe, White Bird In a Blizzard feels like a tiptoe into the mainstream – and the journey seems to have seriously neutered that voice.Based on the novel by Laura Kasischke and set in the late Eighties, it centres on Kat Conners (Shailene Woodley), a suburban 17-year-old whose teenage growing pains are exacerbated by the sudden and unexplained Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
We get the big city views of Chicago, the bright lights and the skyscrapers, a few times in Kim Longinotto’s Dreamcatcher, but for the most part we’re planted firmly down at street level, in areas of town probably you wouldn’t want to go to, a fair amount of the time at night. That’s where we first meet the film’s protagonist Brenda Myers-Powell (though I don’t think we ever actually hear her addressed by her surname), who’s cruising the streets, handing out condoms to any prostitute she can find. What she’s really offering, though, is advice – the advice of one who has herself managed to Read more ...
Heidi Goldsmith
Mari Kvien Brunvoll - Norwegian improviser, singer and composer - enters the Kings Place stage more like a pianist's page-turner than the night's sole performer, and sits cross-legged at her pedals. Dressed in a neutral dark grey, she doesn't seek applause so instead we are left silently watching her adjust a microphone and untie a little red book. Her methodical calm creates a patient audience, intrigued enough to find her subtle actions compelling. Without a word she begins singing a rhythmic melody, as if a phrase of Indian classical recitation had been uttered, and traveled from the Read more ...