Reviews
David Nice
Backed up by reasonably adventurous orchestral programming, lucky conductors can forge a strong Stravinsky evening by picking and mixing from his five ancient Greek rituals. Sir John Eliot Gardiner, unintentionally homaging the late Sir Colin Davis who at least in earlier days would have jumped to such a pairing, chose to celebrate his 70th birthday with the extremes of white balletic lyric poem Apollon musagète and hard-hitting blackest tragedy Oedipus Rex.Apollo’s celestial strings and the acerbic mix of brass with woodwind in Oedipus, all superbly aligned, guaranteed further contrasts. But Read more ...
joe.muggs
I have to admit I was That Hipster with Underworld: loved them circa 1991, stopped being intensely interested around the first album, diverged almost completely after “Born Slippy” went supernova circa 1995. It was wonderful the way that Karl Hyde bodged together torn up fragments of overheard conversations into his rave-dada lyrics to express the delirium of the rave era, but as the band's instrumental film soundtracks started to become the most interesting thing about them, perhaps foolishly I wrote him off as a one-trick pony, never again to repeat the inspiration of “Mmm Skyscraper I Love Read more ...
Julian White
The first minutes of Paula Milne's new three-parter are absolutely hilarious. MP Aiden Hoynes (David Tennant) resigns from his post as Business Secretary and launches an attack on the Prime Minister from the backbenches in an attempt to trigger a leadership contest, only to find his comments greeted by embarrassed silence. In a split second he has turned from a Westminster high-flier into a social leper who can clear out the House of Commons Gents like a foul gaseous emission. He gambled, he lost and he has no one to blame but himself – well, himself and his best friend, Work and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You wait years for a female comedy duo to take up where French & Saunders left off, then two come along within a calendar year. Which just about counts as at once. Anna & Katy, who recently had a run on Channel 4, rely for most of their wit on a wide range of silly voices. Watson & Oliver, who have returned for a second series, feel like more traditional sketch artists. They observe and they spoof and even hint at pathos.Not that they were entirely welcome last time round. The comment stream for theartsdesk’s review of the first series divided unequally between the appreciative Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
“In a world…” How many times have we heard this portentous introduction to a movie trailer, in a reverberating baritone whose seriousness is in stark contrast to the epic fluff it seeks to promote. Director/writer/star Lake Bell’s oddball and hugely likeable comedy makes up for some of the pain we’ve had to endure through such promos, by taking a peep into the world of the voice-over artists, whose finely-honed vocals are responsible.Bell plays Carol, a young woman who is working hard to emulate her father, Sam (Fred Melamed), a legend in LA’s voice-over community. But the odious parent Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Conor McPherson’s 1997 play has become a modern classic, and it's not difficult to see why. It's a glorious evening of storytelling that allows the cast to display their wares, as the conversation between characters who have known each other all their lives flows and ebbs as they reminisce, josh and cajole each other with both affection and darker, underlying feelings. Such naturalistic conversation is, strangely enough, often hard to present with authenticity, but when it's done well - as it is here - one forgets this is acting. We could be eavesdropping on real people chatting.We are in Read more ...
Simon Munk
It has to have been the trailer, there's really no other explanation. Before the original Dead Island came out, there was a trailer. And not just a trailer, but the trailer – probably the most finely-crafted, greatest piece of teaser content ever created for film, TV or games. It's the only possible reason why Dead Island sold as well as it did... and unfortunately, there isn't a similarly brilliant trailer for its sequel, Riptide.The original trailer (see it here) used some beautifully heart-tugging music and a time-running-backwards schtick to pick apart a holidaying family's descent into Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What if John Lennon had left The Beatles in 1962? What if they had continued without him? And what if he had still become the acid-tongued, ready-with-a-quip character the real world became familiar with? Snodgrass took those what-ifs and ran with them to depict a parallel world that was less the “hilarious comedy drama” trailed by Sky and more a gloomy, slightly creepy oddity made even more so by Ian Hart’s deft, second-nature portrayal of a Lennon floundering on life’s scrapheap.Hart has played Lennon twice before and this third outing took him into an imaginary scenario originally created Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
It may not be Scorsese and De Niro, but the partnership between Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan has been extremely fruitful. It has given us Coogan’s sublime portrayal of legendary music promoter Tony Wilson in 24 Hour Party People, a triple role as that great literary waffler Tristram Shandy, Tristram’s dad, and as himself playing them in the dazzlingly post-modern A Cock and Bull Story, and again as the worst public image of himself in the television series The Trip.Real, fictional, autobiographical, there’s a certain pattern here, of grandiosity, self-delusion and prattishness. So Read more ...
Russ Coffey
On Monday, Pink shocked Twitter followers by announcing she was pulling out of a gig at Birmingham’s LG Arena. A lung infection had confined her to the hotel. “She better get well soon,” said one fan. “I’d die if she cancelled at the O2.” She didn’t, of course. Whether due to an awful lot of oranges or sheer guts she arrived on stage last night, catapulted by giant bungee cords.The high-octane pace lasted all night long. At the end she was flying again – this time suspended on wires and being fired from one end of the arena to the other. In the intervening two hours, the 33-year old mother Read more ...
peter.quinn
The CD booklet note by NASA astrobiologist Daniella Scalice is just the first of many striking features on this third Basho CD by the Mercury Prize-nominated pianist Kit Downes. Joined by his core trio of bassist Calum Gourlay and drummer James Maddren (both fellow alumni of the Royal Academy of Music), plus reeds player James Allsopp and cellist Lucy Railton, Light From Old Stars sees Downes really getting into his compositional stride.With rippling arpeggiations on the piano strings and icy harmonics in the cello, album opener “Wander and Colossus” ushers you into the album's singular sound Read more ...
Gary Raymond
The play is the thing, to quote one famous bereaved theatrical son, and in this new collaboration between Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, artist Marc Rees and playwright Roger Williams, it is most definitely the thing. A Welsh-language multi-media promenade production that takes as its themes the erosion of the traditions of agricultural communities, Tir Sir Gâr is a complex balancing act between fact and fiction, and between emotional, involving drama and cold introspective installation art. The balance is delicate, sometimes successful and sometimes not.Granted, the story would not be enough on Read more ...