Reviews
edward.seckerson
For the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s second residency at the Barbican Centre Riccardo Chailly pulled focus on an entirely new sounding Brahms. Gone were all those bad performance practices, bad habits, from the early 20th century, gone was the lingering romanticism, the willful soupiness, and in with a vengeance came a classical rigour, a lean and hungry vitality. Like so much of what we have come to expect of Chailly the first of this four concert series with its attendant side events brought a total re-evaluation of the composer: no longer the conservative romantic, the polar opposite of Read more ...
Florence Hallett
It surely takes courage to conceive an exhibition around a single, slightly obscure work by an artist whose oeuvre boasts an array of crowd-pleasers. Rather than gathering together the greatest hits, the Courtauld Gallery’s new exhibition takes as its starting point a single sheet of paper; on one side is a finely wrought figure from the parable of the Wise and the Foolish Virgins, while on the verso are studies of Dürer’s left leg.That these very different drawings occupy the same sheet of paper is at the heart of this exhibition, and that the sheet is from the Courtauld’s own collection Read more ...
Katie Colombus
After a busy year, moving their headquarters from Chiswick to new premises on the South Bank, Rambert dance company have managed to keep momentum working with stalwarts such as Ashley Page and Mark Baldwin as well as branching out with exciting new choreography by Barak Marshall.Opening the evening with a world premiere by Ashley Page - his first work for a UK company since leaving the Scottish Ballet last year - Subterrain is a plotless piece that serves to showcase the supreme talents of this vibrant company. The movement is strong and mesmerizing although not particularly moving Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
With a hero who’s an aspiring actor and an ensemble of theatrical types trapped outside time as supporting cast, the staginess of Ferzan Ozpetek’s A Magnificent Haunting comes as little surprise. It makes for sometimes nicely camp overplaying, though the comedy that made the Turkish-born director’s latest film a hit in his adopted Italy doesn’t travel easily beyond borders. Some elements, including gay traces, transvestite cameos and females at nervous breakdown levels, hint at eccentric sensibilities akin to those of Pedro Almodóvar. But Haunting doesn’t aim to be edgy, settling instead for Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The Royal Court is justly proud of being the home of British new writing, but it is also a venue which has a great tradition of staging work from abroad. From bringing Brecht and Beckett here in the 1950s to its more recent international summer schools, this is a place where you might make the acquaintance of Eastern European, Latin American or Russian playwrights. Now, following in the footsteps of Chennai-based Anupama Chandrasekhar, whose play Disconnect was here in 2010, comes another Indian talent.Abhishek Majumdar’s Royal Court debut is set in Kashmir. It is just before the Muslim Read more ...
James Williams
Walking into London’s cavernous O2 Arena for Peter Gabriel’s So 25 show last night felt like stumbling onto the set of some David Lean epic: Peter of Surrey, if you will. With a number of imposing lighting and camera rigs framing the already roomy stage, the show’s chroniclers sat perched perilously in suspended chairs with their equipment focused on the band setting up before us.If it was not already clear, last night’s concert was filmed for posterity, or more likely a DVD. To explain the situation the film’s director appeared onstage to guide the audience through the night’s proceedings. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Vivacious blonde presenter Cherry Healey’s latest three-part series aims to show how a dangerously large proportion of the nation’s youth are abusing themselves with booze, drugs and food “until their young bodies and minds are ready for retirement". Part one – about alcohol - opens, predictably, on the streets of Newcastle where the usual array of working class Geordie pissheads they snag for these programmes are staggering about Bigg Market and slurring that they just don’t care. “Why dwell on something you may not get?” runs the typical response from a young woman who Healey’s breathalyser Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“Fancy my mum? I’d rather go down on Hitler.” When the verbal violence of Steven Berkoff meets Mark-Anthony Turnage’s musical iconoclasm, the result is unlike any Oedipus story you’ve ever heard. Well, except for the shagging his mum bit. That’s still much the same. Since its premiere in 1988, Greek has become something of a contemporary classic, and has proved again and again that it really deserves its place in both the repertoire and the opera house. Reviving their award-winning 2011 production, Music Theatre Wales have returned to remind us just how good the piece is, and what a star they Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Of the many challenges facing a contemporary jazz quartet, there are, perhaps, several more pressing than becoming a gentleman. For this extraordinary band, their conviction derives from the affection, respect and detail with which they synthesise such a breadth of jazz tradition. Just arrived in London for the final leg of a tour to launch their second album Internationally Recognised Aliens, this first night of four at Pizza Express was an utterly compelling statement of that identity, spanning several genres of the contemporary jazz guitar. The gentlemen’s variety is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“We grew up like animals,” says FAME Studios’ founder Rick Hall of his upbringing. “That made me better… I wanted to be somebody.” He did become somebody, and in the process put Alabama’s Muscle Shoals on the map. This film tells the story of how a small city birthed some of the greatest American music of the 20th century, and of the ripples which subsequently spread. The Rolling Stones recorded there in 1969. Five years earlier they had released their version of Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On”. Hall was behind the original, his first production.Tucked just inside the north-west Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Thirty seven years since first breaking into the public consciousness and following a period being regarded as punk’s pantomime dame, John Lydon is now finally reaping wider musical recognition and kudos. Recent times have seen a revitalisation of Public Image Ltd (albeit in the guise of a cottage industry and completely on their own terms) with extensive touring and the muscular return-to-form album, This is PiL.However, I have to admit I attended last night's show with a degree of trepidation. PiL have never been the most consistent band and I wondered if the man who used to insult hippies Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“Everything has happened so quickly,” Katherine Glendenning mused as the new series of The Paradise shot off the block. She'd been en voyage for a year, losing a father and gaining a husband, but now Katherine was back. Moray’s melancholy sojourn on coffee and cognac in Paris – “thoroughly French in every way,” he found it, with less originality than we might have expected – had been suddenly cut short too, and he was hot-footing it back to the waiting arms of Denise. The dramatic rapiers were drawn. More immediately worrying was that business at the Paradise was down, badly down. Not Read more ...