Reviews
bella.todd
The proto version of this tribute show took place at Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2008 on the eve of the 30th anniversary of Sandy Denny’s death. This tour coincides with the release of a new box-set and draws on Thea Gilmore’s courageous recent settings of some of Denny’s rediscovered lyrics. A career-spanning set of covers, it pours water on the embers of a stunning back catalogue as much as it reignites them.Young compere Andrew Batt is clearly a dedicated Denny fan, having himself compiled the 19-CD box set (including 100 previously unreleased tracks). But with his trendily rolled jacket Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The purple cow has taken up its summer residency on the South Bank in London before making the journey to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. As ever, the line-up of performers is extensive: last night comic Tom Allen performed his chat show with the help of a few comedy guests.Allen is a likeable presence on stage and gave the audience 15 minutes of stand-up, with jokes old and new, before he brought on his guests. Walking across the stage, he unwisely tried a rock 'n' roll moment when, Eddie van Halen-like, he thrust a leg on to an onstage amp, before realising the implausibility of such a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This much-rumoured independent movie has been in the works since 2006, and is improbably billed as a Finnish-German-Australian co-production. It's also unusual for being a project that grew out of the online self-supporting film-making community, Wreck-a-Movie.The premise is almost irresistible, and is summed up in the marketing tagline: "In 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon. In 2018 they're coming back." The action commences with the American "Liberty" space mission landing on our nearest galactic neighbour, but it transpires that it's essentially a promotional visit to boost the re-election Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
The last night Haitink conducted at the Royal Opera House as musical director the staff wheeled on a moped as a leaving present. Ever since, his conducting has been inextricably linked to that mode of transport in my head. With Haitink, music-making has always seemed to be about getting from A to B in the most dependable, unfussy and often uninspiring way possible. For years, I haven't been able to see the point of him at all. But last night's performance of Bruckner Five with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra made me realise that a straight, uncluttered approach (especially to Bruckner) is Read more ...
David Nice
Glyndebourne nature, it seems, runs along as smoothly as the much discussed new wind turbine on the hill. Within the theatre, though, all is flux: director Melly Still and Vladimir Jurowski, conducting an incandescent London Philharmonic Orchestra, show just how flexible it's possible to be with the viciousness and the vivacity in Janáček's kaleidoscope of birth, copulation, death and a redemption of sorts in celebration of the natural order.What the composer challengingly called "a merry thing with a sad end" is not, as some past productions have played it, an animal fable for children. Read more ...
fisun.guner
The Globe to Globe season has enjoyed tremendous goodwill from audiences and critics alike. And this has been largely repaid, for it’s been a joy and a wonder to learn just how much contemporary relevance can be mined and brought into sharp relief, and with such audacious wit, when stripped of the plays’ native tongue. So one wishes one could keep up the momentum of goodwill for every production.And why not? If one can be convinced by a South Sudanese production of Cymbeline and an Armenian King John (neither plays are highlights of the Shakespearean repertoire, whatever case can be made in Read more ...
Natalie Shaw
One image remains stuck from Watch the Throne's second of five sold-out nights in London; it’s a song-long vision of Kanye West and Jay-Z – aka J Hova or just Hov – sat side by side for Hov’s “Hard Knock Life”. Hov’s words fell out of his mouth seemingly effortlessly as the track's structure emerged while ‘Ye sat in a silent, contemplative stoop - his dripping sweat and jewellery making him look post-marathon mid-set.They’re hip hop’s biggest stars, sure, but here we have two very different entities. For their numerous collaborations – aside from the Watch the Throne album, some of Jay-Z's Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Welsh National Opera has a good track record with Wagner. Its Meistersinger of two summers ago is already the stuff of legend (and alas not likely to return to reality); farther back one recalls a more than respectable Parsifal, a notable Ring cycle, and an old Tristan under Goodall that’s still talked about in hushed whispers.This more recent Tristan, itself almost two decades old, belongs strictly to a new era. Nowadays WNO does original language and books international singers, which in theory – if not always in practice – lifts its productions out of the provincial league. It also has the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It ended where it began, between Copenhagen and Malmö along the Öresund bridge. The journey back to square one took in issues of homelessness, mental health, immigration and child labour. Drug abuse, national identity, family break-up and the power of the media cropped up too. But none of these are what The Bridge hinged on. Without its main characters and measured pace, The Bridge could have been little more than a bleak trudge through society’s ills.The final episode was typically understated, revealing its layers and horrors gradually. Martin Rohde’s (Kim Bodnia) son had been abducted Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The Queen is the first mass-media monarch, and still probably the most ubiquitously depicted person in history. Her 60 years on the throne is only exceeded by Victoria, and her reign has coincided, of course, with photography, film and television. The profusion of royal imagery is exaggerated and exacerbated by the cult of celebrity and the new technology of the internet and social networking. This has led to an overwhelming sense that the public has the right to know the most intimate details of the lives of public figures.The Queen however has, one way or another, escaped the Read more ...
josh.spero
Like a post-Soviet Oedipal X-Factor, the Belarus Free Theatre on Friday night gave one of the greatest productions of King Lear London has ever seen. Forget our local Lears, with naked theatrical knights and casts in emotional straitjackets: this was as cruel, as beautiful, as you could want. It shook the Globe from the yard to the rafters.Part of Globe to Globe, it is a poignant play for a company of dissidents. Lear (Aleh Sidorchik) wore a radiant gauntlet, which he broke Cordelia’s nose with when she refused to sing the songs her sisters had. Goneril’s was an orgasmic version of "My Heart Read more ...
theartsdesk
Paul and Linda McCartney: Ram (Deluxe Edition)Jasper ReesThe project to reissue the big moments in Paul McCartney’s solo career continues. McCartney and Band on the Run have already had the deluxe treatment. Now it’s the turn of 1971's Ram, the one and only time the uxorious former Beatle gave the lovely Linda equal billing. She takes a co-writing credit on half a dozen songs, supplies backing vocals and, most of all, sleeve shots of her hubby wrangling livestock and jamming. Ram is more notable for other things. Having played all the instruments on his first solo effort, it found McCartney Read more ...