Reviews
Hanna Weibye
In Trasmín, the curtain rises on two bodies leaning apart, yet reaching back to face one other, each columnar figure a twisted into a perfect spiral line from knees to the tips of curved fingers. Their feet are concealed by the great fabric swathes (for which “frills” is much too flimsy a label) of their traditional bata de cola dresses: rising from those grey cascades they look like two rococo sculptures in a fountain.One of the dress wearers is Belén Maya, a star who has done much over her career to incorporate other dance influences into traditional flamenco. And the other is Manuel Liñán Read more ...
fisun.guner
Georg Baselitz, the veteran German artist who likes to bait, provoke and raise hackles, most recently with an interview in Der Spiegel in which he said women artists couldn’t paint (he mentioned the few exceptions, which was generous of him), is enjoying a triple billing in London. His new paintings at the Gagosian Gallery adopt the Abstract Expressionist brushstrokes and bright palette of Willem de Kooning, while the British Museum displays prints from the early Sixties and Seventies, alongside the graphic works of five postwar German contemporaries. The third outing opens this week at Read more ...
Andy Plaice
Crime drama at its best not only offers a satisfying mystery and characters with whom we want to spend time, but a strong sense of place, a location that captures our imagination and makes us want to know more. Little wonder then that the BBC snapped up the rights to Ann Cleeves’s Shetland Quartet of novels featuring Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, the Scottish cop with the Spanish ancestor. With its authentic Shetland locations, Raven Black (the first of three two-part stories) was beautiful to look at.It's the middle of summer and nobody can sleep. It's making the locals crazyFrom the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The history of computer games being turned into movies has not been a happy one (Max Payne, Battleship, Lara Croft), but the blockbusting Need for Speed car-racing franchise fares rather better. This movie version is of course simplistically plotted and completely ludicrous for almost every one of its 130 minutes. But the action is frantic and non-stop, the stunts are performed by stuntmen rather than computer software, and the cars are freakin' awesome.What's more, you have Aaron Paul in the lead role of Tobey Marshall, a poor boy from the nondescript blue collar town of Mt Kisco, New York Read more ...
Nick Hasted
There are more bizarre, horrific and unnervingly beautiful moments in Jonathan Glazer’s much delayed third film than in the rest of his star Scarlett Johansson’s career. The strap-line - Scarlett as an alien fatally seducing Scottish men - suggests bonkers B-movie elements which Under the Skin has its share of. But by abandoning the hoary s.f. back-story of the Michel Faber novel this adapts, Glazer has made a film which teeters on the edge of pretentious absurdity, and to its detractors falls in headlong; which is broken-backed, losing its way for crucial periods; but which is also memorably Read more ...
David Nice
An orchestral musician recently told me that only one per cent of graduates from UK music colleges go on to take up a post in an established opera company or orchestra. You’d think, given such an alarming statistic, that there would be a lot of very good voices floating around trying to drum up work. Young talent is enterprisingly putting itself out there in a new wave of pub or site-specific fringe performances. I’ve shied away from pocket Verdi and Puccini stagings because I really wonder if those operas can take any but the most highly-trained, opulent voices; anything less is selling them Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It may seem strange that something we do every day of our lives – talking – is an incredibly difficult thing to put in a televisual setting, and the list of those who have tried to do a chat show and failed to make an impact is long. Davina McCall, Gaby Roslin, Ruth Jones, to name just a few - despite having real talent in broadcasting and comedy – have crashed and burned when given a sofa and a bunch of people they've never met before to have a natter with.And so Michael McIntyre, who reckons he's a natural for the job, is the latest to be given a shot at the genre - following in the wake of Read more ...
Heather Neill
The full title of Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, first produced in Chicago in 2012, is deliberately gauche and in need of editing. No review is complete without it, however, so here it is: We Are Proud To Present A Presentation About The Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known As Southwest Africa, From The German Sudwestafrika, Between The Years 1884 - 1915. As they enter through the rehearsal room at the Bush, the audience encounters the group of well-intentioned young people supposedly keen to tell us the tragic story of the first genocide of the 20th century. The walls are covered, as they Read more ...
simon.broughton
“This is not so much a total immersion, more of a quick shower,” said Simon Wright, biographer of Villa Lobos at the start of the day-long exploration of his music. With up to 1,500 works in existence – the exact number is unconfirmed – he promised we’d be “hacking our way through a tiny part of this immense jungle”, to use another metaphor that seems alarmingly appropriate with this composer.Heitor Villa Lobos (1887-1959) was Brazil’s greatest "classical" composer and yet less than a handful of works are commonly played in Europe. Best-known is his luxuriant Bachianas Brasileiras No 5, in Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Hito Steyerl is a cool cookie. As well as studying film and television in Munich, she gained a PhD in philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and her intelligence shines through in every magical frame of her videos. Three are on show at the ICA along with two recorded talks in which she uses words and pictures to spin beguiling tales that – part fact, part fancy – operate in the space between lecture and performance.Water permeates every pixel of her latest video, Liquidity (main picture and below right) which follows the fortunes of financier Jacob Wood. After losing his job Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
There’s been reasonable diversity in the ballet shown on the BBC in recent years – from full-length broadcasts of Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty and The Red Shoes to the compelling 2011 fly-on-the-wall The Agony and the Ecstasy. That’s why it was something of a disappointment to find this week’s five-hour ballet season, which finished last night, pushing a rather blandly uniform story about Tchaikovsky, Darcey Bussell and Margot Fonteyn.Last Saturday, the season opener, Darcey’s Ballerina Heroines (BBC 2), set the tone by getting the predictable Fonteyn panegyric in early, and by giving Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Revelling in the acoustic precision of the recently opened Milton Court concert hall last night, Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen showed once more why his quartet’s combination of tersely lyrical melodies and syncopated rhythms is so appealing. For his new album, some of which was played here, his typically European, restrained sound was, to a greater extent than previously, augmented by some distinctly funky passages, which were drawn out with immense skill and sensitivity from what had gone before. Several pieces shared both an extraordinary variety of style, and a seamlessly smooth Read more ...