Reviews
Veronica Lee
EM Forster fans will straight away get the reference in the quiz show's title to Howards End. Those of a less literary bent will make another mental link – Connect Four, a game for six-year-olds and up invented in 1974 and still going strong – which shares with its near-namesake the need for abstract reasoning. In fact when I first heard about Only Connect the latter was the connection I made, but it's typical of fans of the BBC show that they could make either. Arcane knowledge, both of intellectual pursuits and popular culture, goes a long way in this programme.Victoria Coren (or Victoria Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Gavin Creel licked his trophy in delight, Zrinka Cvitešić spoke of making Croatian history, and Sharon D Clarke let out an exultant "wow" from the podium that was surely heard well beyond the walls of the Royal Opera House. And so it was Sunday night at the 38th annual Laurence Olivier Awards, which coupled the occasional surprise (the win for Once leading lady Cvitešić very much among them) with the unusually meritocratic sense that for once - and not before time - the right people were receiving the right awards.That was nowhere more true than of the actress prize for Lesley Manville, one Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
This concert brought to a close the London Symphony Orchestra's focus on Scriabin, in a series appropriately titled "Music in colour". The Third Symphony was partnered here with Messiaen’s early work Les offrandes oubliées and Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto – both in their own way richly colouristic works. Though the LSO never puts half-baked goods on stage, it is fair to say that, having just returned from a European tour which included three performances of this programme, the result was even more polished than usual – especially considering Scriabin is hardly core repertoire these days. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The first line of his Wikipedia entry says that Tom Hardy "is an English actor" (he was born in Hammersmith), but for the 84 minute duration of Locke I was fully prepared to accept that he came from Llangollen or Llareggub. The film's narrative floats on Hardy's warming Welsh brogue like a boat navigating heaving tides and contrary currents, as his character Ivan Locke tries to cope with his life disintegrating around his ears.It's not easy to devise an entirely fresh form of film-making, but writer/director Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things) has had a pretty good go here. Read more ...
Elin Williams
Cardiff Bay’s Bute Street is home to many imposing buildings, a large number of which are derelict. They have the potential to become something more than they currently are. They can be revived, and that’s what Louise Osborn has done by mounting her site-specific production to one of them. Roar Ensemble and Sherman Cymru have brought Maudie’s Rooms back to an old customs and immigration house in Cardiff after sell-out performances last year.An intimate audience of just 20 is summoned to a bus stop opposite the house, where it is met by Professor Arlo Butterworth, who appears to be lost and Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Pianist Ivo Neame, whose quintet gave a masterclass in the more reflective, concept-driven variety of contemporary jazz at Kings Place last night, is one of the lynchpins of the London scene. As well as leading and composing for this, his own group, he’s also a member of the LOOP Collective, supertrio Phronesis, and Marius Neset’s Golden Xplosion. Playing a mixture of new originals and a couple of pieces from their last album, Yatra, Neame’s quintet demonstrated both the highest collective technique and a winsome sense of wit and whimsy.With an instrumental line-up of piano/accordion, double Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Chicago Hit Factory – The Vee-Jay Story 1953-1966According to the book accompanying this 10-disc tribute to the Chicago independent label, “in one month alone in 1964 Vee-Jay records sold 2.6 million records. Two years later the company was bankrupt.” The reason for it flying so high in 1964 was a deal made in 1962 when the label began licensing material from Britain’s EMI. The prize then was yodelling popster Frank Ifield, whose “I Remember You” Vee-Jay got into the US Top 10. Along with Ifield, they got an unknown quantity called The Beatles. When 1964 arrived, Vee- Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring captures the pulsing terror of seasonal change, the relentless onward drive of nature that brings death closer even as life burns at its most ferocious. The 1913 première of the ballet created by Vaslav Nijinsky infamously caused a riot in its Parisian audience. Michael Keegan-Dolan’s version for his company Fabulous Beast has terrifying dog heads and men furiously humping the ground. So if you were tripping merrily through London on a mild evening, heart lifted by the April light and the work-week’s end, you might well think that your mood would be better matched Read more ...
philip radcliffe
Soccer-mad Shostakovich’s score for a ballet about a Soviet football team visiting Western Europe, the world premiere of an oboe concerto by John Casken marking the 1914 centenary, and a rare semi-staged performance of Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins made up this remarkable programme. Even Sir Mark Elder pronounced it “eccentric”.The centrepiece and a musical milestone was Casken’s specially commissioned work, Apollinaire’s Bird, inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire’s poem, “A Bird Sings”, written while fighting in the trenches. In that poem, he captured the isolation of a bird singing amid Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Another week, another major British ballet company takes on a key cultural patrimony in a brand-new work. It might seem odd that the Royal Ballet’s new Winter’s Tale generates more critical reservations than English National Ballet’s take on the First World War, though the two evenings succeed and fail in almost equal measure. But that’s what you get for tackling Shakespeare, as well as for being the overdog: in a way, it is testament to the Royal Ballet’s tremendous track record with story ballets that we all go into a new one believing (or at least hoping) that we are about to be given Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
The Royal Family: politically irrelevant anachronism? Fodder for tourism? Or enduring symbol of what it means to be British? Mike Bartlett’s shrewd new drama, in a taut, economical and strongly acted production by Rupert Goold, tussles with issues of the limits and shifting values of monarchical power, and with questions of national identity. It has a playfulness that occasionally borders on the glib – yet it also has teeth. It’s unquestionably clever, but it sometimes feels like a game of chess in which Goold and Bartlett move the pieces around the board with such skilful deliberation that a Read more ...
graham.rickson
For record collectors of a certain age, Pascal Rogé is Mr French Piano Music; if you’re looking for decent recordings of Ravel, Poulenc, Saint-Saëns and Debussy, he’s the man. Hearing him perform live, here with his wife and duet partner Ami Rogé, is an overwhelming, entertaining experience, though you’re occasionally confounded by Rogé’s calm, unruffled exterior.In the dryish, intimate acoustic of Leeds’s Howard Assembly Room, the sounds conjured were magnificent. Pedal notes teetered on the edge of audibility; thunderous, fruity chords made the floorboards vibrate. And Rogé never broke a Read more ...