Reviews
Caroline Crampton
In many ways, the darkness is the most memorable aspect of this production. It's so deep and all-encompassing that your eyes start to play tricks on you, seeing spots of light and shadow where there is only blackness. Because of this, when Lisa Dwan's mouth is slowly illuminated eight feet up on the stage, it's easy to dismiss it at first as just another trick of the dark. The only light in the theatre seems to emanate from the mouth itself, as it begins to gasp before tumbling into the breakneck stream of consciousness monologue that is Beckett's Not I.First performed at the Royal Court by Read more ...
fisun.guner
In 1920, Man Ray, now better known for his solarized photographs, produced a sculpture made from found objects. L'Enigme d'Isidore Ducasse, named after the 19th-century French poet who used the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont, is a sewing machine wrapped in a wool blanket and tied with string. The title refers to the poet’s evocation of the strange, even threatening beauty of familiar objects in startling juxtaposition, and is a line later adopted by André Breton to suggest Surrealist dislocation. With regard to Man Ray’s sculpture, we have to take it on trust that it’s a sewing machine Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Crystal Fairy (or to give it its full, original name Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and 2012) is an endearing curio from odd-couple director and star Sebastián Silva and Michael Cera, who have teamed up for a double-bill of projects: the other one is the psychological thriller Magic Magic, currently scheduled for an April release. Silva describes Crystal Fairy as being about "the birth of compassion in someone's life"; it's a comedic drama, improvised by its cast and buoyed by character-sensitive direction and a pair of perfectly pitched, often squirm-inducing, performances.Silva is Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Niko (Tom Schilling) just wants a decent cup of coffee. With this ambling excuse for motivation, he drifts through a day and night in Berlin, contriving to lose his girlfriend, driver’s license and college funding (Dad’s just discovered he dropped out two years ago). Coincidentally similar to Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, this black-and-white indie film about late-twentysomething urban ennui has touched a nerve in Germany, where it won six German Film Awards, as well as the European Film Awards’ European Discovery prize, and is still showing in Berlin a year after release.Writer-director Jan Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
“There’s not much more I can do in action apart from explode,” says Sylvester Stallone with a grin on his face on being asked about the next step in his career. Following a video montage of the sweaty, musclebound action heroes Stallone is adored for (minus any clips from Rhinestone, his musical collaboration with Dolly Parton), a jolly and reflective Stallone took to the London Palladium stage in sharp suit full of sage advice and revelations about his writing process. From the centre aisle of the Royal Circle, Sly looked fit and healthy and, thanks to the entire evening also being projected Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock reached the end of its latest brief span, Timeshift [****] surveyed the history of dramatic interpretations of Baker Street's finest with a wry eye, in a narrative sprinkled with nutritious facts and anecdotes. The account by Margaret Robinson from the Hammer Films art department of how she designed the latex horror mask for The Hound of the Baskervilles (the title role was played by a Great Dane called Colonel) was notably priceless.Aided by zesty interviews with Christopher Lee, Tim Pigott-Smith, PD James and more, and pinned together by an outrageously Read more ...
peter.quinn
Musically, lyrically, dramatically, on every count this debut album from The Gloaming is exceptional. Four-fifths of the group - Clare fiddle player Martin Hayes, Chicago guitarist Dennis Cahill, the Cúil Aodha sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionaird and Dublin-born hardanger player Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh - are all well-known figures within traditional Irish music. It's The Gloaming's fifth member, New York-based pianist (and album producer) Thomas Bartlett, whose harmonic, rhythmic and textural effects serve to paint this music on a wider, more expansive canvas.Bringing together a song and six Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Last night’s Mozart and Haydn concert at the Barbican was billed as Magdalena Kožená with Les Violons du Roy. In practice it actually turned out to be Les Violons du Roy with Magdalena Kožená, which (barring a few die-hard fans of the Czech mezzo) was surely preferable for all concerned.Even on a good day Kožená’s voice has a thinness to it. At its best this can translate to agile coloratura, but it’s the vocal opposite of an iceberg – there’s really nothing anchoring it beneath the surface – and the minute any kind of strain or illness threatens it can quickly go adrift. Sounding ragged and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If you’re a channel trying to prove that there is life in a tired old format, it’s hard to think of a more effective way than signing up Kylie Minogue. It’s tough for a telly talent show to make an impact in those early weeks, before the audience has warmed enough to the contestants to begin rooting for them or otherwise, but the prospect of will.i.am serenading the diminutive diva during the judges’ opening medley of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and “I Predict a Riot” was reason enough to tune in to the third series of The Voice.The contestants were almost exclusively pale, skinny Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Having brought us to the end of Homeland, Channel 4 are hoping lightning will strike twice by introducing another American series based on an Israeli original. Where Homeland was the American version of Hatufim, Hostages is derived from Bnei Aruba, made by Israel's Channel 10, who sold the format to CBS before the original had even been completed.Not that this is another war-on-terror saga, unless a theme of that nature should happen to pop up later in the series. This time, the plot revolves around an elite surgeon, Dr Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette), and her family. As the first episode opens Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Jackson C. Frank: Jackson C. Frank“I am afraid of the ocean as much as the possibility it is my mother,” declared Jackson C. Frank in the liner notes to his sole, eponymous album, issued in September 1965. “Songs that I write aren’t mine to admit to,” he went on. “They dwell a little too heavily on the grey area behind my eyes to become my friends.” Presciently, he admitted “you’ll never know me as I do until it’s impossible twilight too late to do anything about it.” This was a singer unafraid to reveal the content of his psyche. He was not pop's usual contender. The album Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Gwilym Simcock, pianist, composer, and jazz-classical crossover specialist, is releasing two albums this year, and at Kings Place last night, the audience had a taste of both. An evening billed as the launch of Instrumation, Simcock’s new album of original suites, became a kind of Simcock tasting menu. He played half of Instrumation, which was officially launched, and sections from his second album of 2014, Reverie at Schloss Elmau.There was also a first set from Simcock’s trio with French saxophonist Celine Bonacina and bassist Michel Benita, which was technically and musically intricate and Read more ...