Reviews
Tom Birchenough
Where there’s a stoker there must be a furnace, and this being Russian director Alexei Balabanov’s latest story from St Petersburg’s gangster 1990s, as well as heating some snow-bound Soviet industrial hulks, its flames also conveniently consume whatever corpses the local criminal gang brings in.That they have such immediate, unceremonial access is less the result of The Stoker inhabiting a world of absolute lawlessness, both literal and moral – that’s practically a given with Balabanov – than because the furnace is presided over by the vulture-thin stoker of the title, Ivan (Mikhail Skryabin Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Controversy is a fickle mistress. When Carmageddon first appeared on PC in 1997, publishers Interplay were forced to cut its copious gore and replace dismembered pedestrians with nice, family-friendly zombies after a publicity-courting submission to the British Board of Film Classification went a bit wrong.Despite the changes - and thanks to some easily installed patches to put the blood back in - the game was still shocking and salacious enough to sell over two million copies and spawn ports for numerous consoles plus a sequel and several add-on packs. Sixteen years on, Carmageddon has Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The mothership has landed. After a year or so of countless stage adaptations ranging from a recitation of the novel in its entirety to a themed party and (just this week) a dance piece, Baz Luhrmann's celluloid version of The Great Gatsby has finally arrived in all its superhero-style 3D scale and scope. So, is this Gatsby great? Not by some measure, and for every moment of inspiration and ingenuity comes another that fails both its literary source and Luhrmann's own instincts. Only in terms of the title character does the film deliver on the adjective that gets written out before us in Read more ...
graham.rickson
Staging Britten’s third opera in the round in a small performance space of the Howard Assembly Room makes complete sense. Albert Herring’s supporting cast of village grotesques are that little bit more oppressive when they’re singing yards away from your face. The effect is nicely claustrophobic too – after this, you somehow can’t imagine seeing this opera in a conventionally-sized opera house. And it means the audience get close to the great Dame Josephine Barstow, who as Lady Billows will be a draw for many. She’s still marvellous – you fear early on that her larger-than-life theatrics will Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Knee Deep, the show by four-person Brisbane acrobatic troupe Casus, is only an hour long but packs more eye-popping antics into its first 10 minutes than many circuses muster in three hours. Their fluid, almost faultless displays of gymnastic skill have a theatrical dynamic that’s so gripping I feel I’ve missed something vital every time I look down for a few seconds to scribble a note on what's occurring. They really are something special.The show begins with Casus company leader (and manager) Emma Serjeant walking on eggs, a big screen above her enlarging the action. Previously Knee Deep Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
North London has a splendid new theatre, The Park, whose £2.5 million existence – without a penny of government subsidy – is something of a miracle given our cash-strapped times. The building itself is also a bit of a marvel, tucked into a Tardis-like space (originally a blacksmith’s) in the heart of Finsbury Park. With two stages – a 200-seat main theatre and a 90-seat studio – and a strong community ethos, The Park has heaps of promise. Hats off to artistic director Jez Bond and his team.The opening play, however, doesn’t quite offer the dramatic fireworks one might have Read more ...
David Nice
Of all the Savoy operas, this merry clash of pirates, policemen and a Major-General flanked by an entire chorus of loving daughters finds Sullivan most in tune with the mid-19th century Italian opera he so lovingly spoofs. So why can’t Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production be similarly fleet-footed with Gilbert’s resourceful, literate lyrics and whimsical plotting? Lloyd-Evans has at his disposal high-quality operatic soloists, a brilliant young chorus and a witty designer. All are squandered. The problem isn’t any clever uprooting into another time and place; after all, Scottish Opera, in Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ventriloquism, once a staple of music hall and variety theatre, has rather gone out of fashion. More mature readers - or students of the form - may be familiar with names such as Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Shari Lewis and Lambchop or Ray Alan and Lord Charles, but they are all decades gone from our stages and television screens. Nina Conti is now one of just a few vent acts to have a popular following, and she's reinventing the form.Her puppets owe more to the soft felt of The Muppets than to the woodworking skills of old, which means her props, while still in many ways caricatures, Read more ...
James Williams
The ICA was the perfect location for the UK debut of hotly tipped new duo Tomorrow’s World, consisting of Air’s Jean-Benoit Dunckel and English synth-rockers New Young Pony Club’s ivory tickler Lou Hayter. The venue added a prestigious edge to what promised to be an auspicious occasion. A scant crowd suggested this was more of a test run than a full-blown debut, but they needn’t have worried about the reaction. Their music spoke for itself.Support came from another alumnus of London’s New Young Pony Club, guitarist Igor Volk. His set was impressive, the newly-released single "Voice" really Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Introductions, eh? When you make someone's acquaintance for the first time, you can never really tell if they’re going to grow on you. They worry about this a lot when knocking up drama serials. So meet Frankie, district nurse, the new resident at nine on Tuesday nights on BBC One. Living with a copper but married to the job. Gap between her teeth, which is always a good sign. Wigs out to music in the car. On the minus side, she treats the voice of Ken Bruce as some kind of life coach. Fancy spending the next few weeks if not years in her company? Because that's very much the plan.Lucy Read more ...
David Nice
Everything seems so free and easy, so do-as-you-darn-well-pleasey, in the Stockmanns’ fjord-view model home. Cheery friends in bright 1970s clothes drop in to chew the social cud as well as Mrs S’s cooking; only her medical-officer husband’s mayoral brother jars, and surely he’s too daft to be taken seriously. So when the good doctor finds irrefutable proof that the waters of the town’s new spa are poisoned, the weight of liberal opinion will surely back him up and all must be well, right?Wrong. This is the unsettling world not only of Henrik Ibsen but also of director-genius Richard Jones, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You have to wonder if there any alternative themes permitted in TV drama apart from murder (preferably multiple, committed by a serial killer) or paedophilia. New five-parter The Fall plonks itself down squarely in category A, with its story of DS Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) from the Metropolitan Police arriving in Belfast to shake up a stalled murder inquiry.This one won't be a whodunnit but rather a howtheycatchim, since we were introduced to the perp only moments after we'd caught our first glimpse of Anderson, who was cleaning a murky-looking skin care product off her face in the Read more ...