Reviews
Kimon Daltas
The Barbican Hall’s house lights faded to black, with just the soft glow of music stand lamps on stage as the Britten Sinfonia filed on and eased into the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Directed from leader’s desk by Jacqueline Shave, the orchestra gave an exquisite account of the piece, the chamber aesthetic and necessary communication between players somehow helping to draw the audience in. It was certainly a rewarding alternative to the lusher – and slushier – version one would hear from a full symphony orchestra’s worth of strings.It was a nice theatrical touch to begin the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Early on in Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene, John le Carré remembers Greene telling him that childhood provides “the bank balance of the writer”. Greene remained in credit on that inspiration front throughout his life, even while he struggled financially in his early writing days with a young family; later in life, too, he lost everything to a swindling financial adviser – the move to France was to avoid the Revenue.Greene went to Berkhamstead School, where his father was headmaster, and was bullied, not least for the assumption that he was a spy for paternal authority (the spy Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: We Are One - Eurovision Song Contest Malmö 2013From the British perspective, one thing stands out at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. And it’s not our entry, the turgid power balladry of Bonnie Tyler’s sure-to-stumble “Believe in Me”. It’s the Armenian entry, “Lonely Planet” by Dorians. Although not that great a song for Armenia's return to the contest after last year's withdrawal, the composer is Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi. Its building chorus, powerful delivery, authentic rock dynamics and plank-spanking guitar solo would easily slot into in the musical Rock of Ages. Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Jazzfest has managed to succeed as a mainstream rock festival. The first weekend’s headliners on the main Acura Stage included John Mayer, Billy Joel and Dave Matthews, while this weekend promises Fleetwood Mac, Maroon 5 and The Black Keys. If the aforementioned suggest a festival devoted to AOR chart-topping US rock, then understand that the festival’s organisers allow the superstars to drag in suburban rock fans, thus underwriting the rich regional music flavours that dominate most of the other 11 stages.Admittedly, the Acura Stage did also host local legends Dr John and Allen Toussaint , Read more ...
David Nice
Blether on MasterChef about love and passion for one’s craft has so devalued the currency that I hesitated in applying the terms to conductor John Wilson, last night moving from Hollywood and Broadway to another enthusiasm, tuneful British music. Yet who merits them better than he?His brand of hectic brilliance was sometimes too much for the Barbican Hall’s magnifying tendencies, but a keen-sprung technique – a word not used enough in culinary TV – leapt over some of the gloopier hurdles in an overture by Walton and a swoony concerto by York Bowen. With Vaughan Williams’s Five Tudor Portraits Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Rikki Beadle-Blair is a high-energy polymath. He’s a real phenomenon. Raised by his lesbian mum in sarf London, he wrote his first play at the age of seven and was, he claims, already directing four years later. Nowadays he creates challenging entertainment in film, education and theatre (18 new plays in six years). He also writes self-help books. His heart’s clearly in the right place. There’s only one problem — he’s not a very good playwright.Gutted, his latest trip down to the council estates of South-East London, is a family drama. It’s a grim tale of an Irish cockney matriarch, Bridie, Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Marie Curie must rank right up there among the world’s achievers of greatness. She certainly wasn’t one of those who had it “thrust upon ’em”. In fact, fate stacked the odds against her achieving the eminence she did in just about every way possible.She was born Maria Skłodowska in Warsaw at a time when Poland was dominated by its Russian occupiers, and scientific training for Poles could only be had on the hoof in the underground, so-called “flying” universities. Through great good fortune she followed her sister to the Sorbonne, one of the very few universities accepting women at the time, Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A thunder sheet booms, a didgeridoo hums distantly, a model ship rears and pitches its way forward through the waves of groundlings and suddenly we find ourselves washed up on the shores of the Globe for another season. All eyes may be on the newly launched Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, but just when we were all at risk of getting too distracted by its novelty, Jeremy Herrin and his new production of The Tempest are here to remind us what the original Globe Theatre does best.We’ve not been short on Tempests in London of late, but if there is any space and company that should be able to make sense Read more ...
stephen.walsh
“Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” Blake asked the tiger. One might have asked the same question of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, with Mozart’s G major Piano Concerto, K.453, as the lamb, in this hyper-diverse Birmingham concert. The image of divine simplicity was in the delicate hands of Mitsuko Uchida, whose Mozart resisted every striped temptation that Andris Nelsons and the CBSO threw in her path. On their own in Scriabin and, to a lesser extent, Webern’s Six Orchestral Pieces, they could emote at will, fearful symmetry and all.Often enjoyable, and with many exquisite moments, Mozart’s Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Family dramas don't come much fruitier than The Eye of the Storm. Fred Schepisi's film adaptation of Nobel laureate Patrick White's 1973 novel will speak most potently to those for whom the (far superior) Amour was too po-faced by half. An Australian deathbed drama that is as loopy and overripe as Michael Haneke's French-language Oscar-winner was rigorous and austere, the movie is best thought of as the celluloid equivalent of those pulpy page-turners that go with us on holiday. You may feel guilty for devouring such material, but you'll stay with it to the very last and breathless moment.And Read more ...
Simon Munk
An invincible army of cybercommandos, neon-pink pulsing colour schemes and the throbbing sounds of a Morodor-style baseline – Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is every bit the dumb Eighties action game on the surface, but underneath it might actually be one of the most interesting approaches to mainstream gaming in a while.Blood Dragon is "downloadable content" – an extra expansion pack served up after the main event (the game of the year, Far Cry 3). The phrase is normally a dire enough idea it should send gamers scurrying in the opposite direction.Most downloadable content packs are hastily- Read more ...
william.ward
I was once the summer guest of friends in southern Calabria, where the head of a hapless “family traitor” in the nearby village of Taurianova had been hacked off and then kicked around the piazza like a football: the news was greeted by the locals with no more than raised eyebrows and a resigned shrug of the shoulders.These things are not often caught on film, and certainly weren’t on offer in The Mafia’s Secret Bunkers. Indeed it’s a good thing that eminent bespectacled academic John Dickie has a good head for heights, as he spends a good deal of this fairly breathless BBC documentary Read more ...