Reviews
stephen.walsh
The Tchaikovsky de nos jours, is Theodore Gumbril’s dismissal of Skryabin in Aldous Huxley’s Twenties novel Antic Hay. For some reason, Alexander Skryabin has suffered more than most from snap judgements of this kind. He has been the woolly theosophist, the vacuous, over-inflated mystifier, the effete, self-indulgent decorative – everything except the refined, disciplined creative genius. It’s high time these images were consigned to the rubbish dump of history, along with the dull-witted Bach, the mad Beethoven, and for that matter the slushy Tchaikovsky. Skryabin was a superior artist whose Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Take some hot Fyodor Dostoyevsky, top it with two scoops of Jesse Eisenberg and stir with writer-director Richard Ayoade – and you'll have The Double, Ayoade’s second feature after his successful Submarine. You know to expect freshness, quirkiness and quality from that far southwestern pool of the UK creative arts. Stylish and sharp, this is a quirky black comedy that clicks with serious undertones, aided by terrific sound design and Eisenberg acting himself off the screen. It feels like Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich meeting Kafka, with a bit of Five Easy Pieces thrown in.It's the Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Perhaps my big mistake was to read the exhibition blurb before going in: as someone who worries about dark, confined spaces, I was anticipating Miroslaw Balka’s new installation with a perverse sort of excitement. Certainly, for anyone who enjoys a dose of controlled terror Above your head sounds promising, with White Cube’s basement gallery supposedly transformed into a “large cage” and the ceiling lowered to a claustrophobic two metres. Disappointingly, however, the thrill was entirely in the anticipation.As someone particularly susceptible to the sensations the Polish artist has tried to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The last time the whippersnapper Morse was on our screens he was getting (a) orphaned and (b) shot. This double dose of pain seemed a bit punitive, but then when sorrows come they come not single spies. The second series of Endeavour seems determined to stack up yet more agonies. So far Morse has been knocked out cold, sustained an unsightly gash on the bridge of his nose, and cowers every time he hears a loud bang. You could swear he’s walked in off the pages of the Bash Street Kids.The idea, presumably, is to carve out a separate identity for the prequel to a franchise which has already had Read more ...
Mark Sheerin
Were it not for the bombs which rained down on Calais, its current Musée des Beaux-Arts would not exist. The 1966 building was part of a civic reconstruction programme, so it too is a war memorial of sorts. And it's now playing host to an exhibition dedicated to the idea of the monument which looks to commemorate the two world wars.Not only is it 100 years since the outbreak of World War One, but it's 70 since the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy. Seeming not to be content with present-day conflicts, like Syria, and potential conflicts, like the Ukraine, the media and to some degree Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road box set“Elton John plays cricket as he plays piano; dressed to kill and as if his life depends on it.” The commentary on the film included in the box-set version of this reissue of 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is hugely over the top and rococo, and treats its subject as a form of showbiz Moses. Brian Forbes’s 45-minute Elton John and Bernie Taupin say Goodbye to Norma Jean is crammed with eyebrow-raising moments, but none more so than when John declares he writes songs in just 30 minutes. “It takes me on average about half-an-hour per song,” he Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
Thérèse Raquin is not a happy sort of production. This musical adaptation of Émile Zola's 1867 novel transports you to the dank darkness of the Passage du Pont Neuf in 19th century Paris, and reveals the inner workings of a secretly miserable family. There are no jazz bands or catchy melodies here.The title character is a young woman, anaesthetised into silent numbness by the repetitive banality of her life in the family's tiny haberdasher's shop. Taken in by her aunt as a child when her Algerian mother died, Thérèse was then married off to her first cousin, her aunt's sickly son Camille, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Always the bridesmaid but never the bride: that adage, and its many equivalents, courses through 20 Feet From Stardom, the hugely entertaining but also gently poignant documentary that was a popular winner at this year's Oscars. A look at the life of backup singers over time - who they were and are and where they have got to - Morgan Neville's short (90-minute) and bittersweet film casts a necessary spotlight on those show biz folk who aren't necessarily given centre-stage.It deepens our response that the given milieu also works as a metaphor for so many lives across all vocations that exist Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Well, that was a bit of a brain workout for the first episode - I confess for much of the opening instalment (five more to follow) I didn't have a clue what was going on, who anybody was or how all the characters and a multitude of story strands were connected. Actually, I'm not sure I did entirely understand by the end, but by then the Norwegian thriller set in the nebulous area where politics, finance and journalism collide had drawn me in sufficiently to tune in next week.For fans of the Scandi/Nordic noir genre (or indeed those suffering withdrawal symptoms after Line of Duty and Homeland Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Piano Concertos 2 and 4 Mahler Chamber Orchestra/Leif Ove Andsnes (piano and director) (Sony)You know that this will be good after just a few seconds; Beethoven's comically strait-laced opening gesture promptly answered by a smartly shaped orchestral tutti. Well-tuned winds and horns are perky, and string articulation is perfect. All so good that you're caught off guard when Leif Ove Andsnes makes his sly entrance and you remember that this is a piano concerto. The lightness of touch is intoxicating, Andsnes scaling down his sound so that he's a perfect match for a well- Read more ...
David Nice
We’ve now learned from the films of Paolo Sorrentino and honorary Roman Ferzan Ozpetek what great and nuanced ensemble acting the Italians can produce. Even so, the towering star of the current scene is the chameleonic Toni Servillo, already hailed as seemingly impassive capo di tutti capi Andreotti in Il Divo and as the (Oscar-winning) regretful playboy Jep Gambardella in the stupendous La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty).Servillo is, in fact, a stage animal of longer standing with feet firmly planted on thespian ground as actor/director, a Neapolitan to the core and as such the natural Read more ...
Guy Oddy
As anyone who has a television will know, Rebecca Ferguson is a graduate of The X Factor – having come runner-up in the 2010 competition. In fact, with her heavily-promoted back story of overcoming heart-ache and disappointment, it looks as if she is presently being set up as the successor to Simon Cowell’s previous Queen Bee, Leona Lewis, whose career seems to have hit the buffers of late. So, armed with songs of survival and redemption that she has largely co-written for her two albums, 2011’s Heaven and last year’s Freedom, she took to the stage in Birmingham to the sound of Billie Read more ...