Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Together or separately, British psychedelia and 1967’s related music have been ceaselessly looked at. There cannot be an awful lot more to say. Nonetheless, the law of diminishing returns is there for ignoring so herewith the follow-up to the 2016 box set Let’s Go Down & Blow Our Minds.Too Much Sun Will Burn - The British Psychedelic Sounds Of 1967 Volume 2 is – in keeping with its predecessor – a 79-track, four-hour clamshell set. Despite the crowded market, it's a great listen. Should an introduction to the territory be needed, the diligent Too Much Sun Will Burn does a mighty fine job. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Finding a fresh twist on the traditional detective mystery is virtually impossible, but Anthony Horowitz has made a bold stab at it with Magpie Murders. This TV adaptation (which appeared on the BritBox streaming platform last year) has been masterminded by Horowitz from his 2016 bestseller, which ingeniously features two interlocking stories, one set in the present day and one in the 1950s.Conleth Hill stars as bestselling crime novelist Alan Conway, a staggeringly wealthy but bitter and disappointed man. He struck it rich with his series of novels featuring the detective Atticus Pünd – Pünd Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The turbulence and agitation of betrayal could be felt from the word go in this galvanising performance of the St John Passion, which administered a jolting urgency to Bach’s radical portrayal of the Easter story. The work will be 300 years old next year, yet this Polyphony Good Friday performance – a fixture at St John’s Smith Square for slightly fewer years – delivered a version as fresh and discomfiting as if the crucifixion had taken place yesterday.That was in no small part due to Nick Pritchard (pictured below), who as the Evangelist narrated the story with a vibrancy that suggested he Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Eugene O’Hare’s The Dry House is the kind of spare but oddly lyrical three-hander that would have made a good Wednesday Play back in the day. For Conor McPherson fans, it will seem like familiar terrain, with all the ingredients for an unusual domestic drama. Think, one interior, probably a humble home or a pub, where a small cast sit and drink, talk, confess, drink some more. Some of them are dead. Here there are two earthbound characters, Chrissy (Mairead McKinley) and her sister Claire (Kathy Kiera Clarke of Derry Girls fame). Also popping in regularly is Chrissy’s late daughter Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Iceland’s soul lies in its interior, a forbidding heartland which overwhelms 19th century Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) on his ill-considered posting to this colonial backwater.Director Hlynur Pálmason showed his talent for snapping unbending male psyches in a country of physical extremes in A White, White Day, a film as visceral as Scorsese in its riven machismo, Malick-like in its vaporous, uncanny landscapes, and wholly Icelandic in its saga-resembling trials and consequences.Simmering masculine conflict sharpens the brew here too, though both films are laced with humour. The Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
All the best sports movies are about more than just sport: the core might be friendship, romance, the battle against discrimination, the importance of following your dreams, of self-realisation and fulfilment, of fighting the corporate machine, of David v Goliath. Admirable themes, all. So, Air is a little different. While it may be mistaken for a sports movie – after all, it touches on the early years of legendary basketball player Michael Jordan – it actually isn’t. At the heart of Air, is money. Money is even more important in Air than it is in Moneyball Read more ...
David Nice
Tenebrae in tenebris: put more plainly, a top choir that’s anything but shadowy, except when it needs to be, doing its bit for the darkness of Maundy Thursday. The thoughtful plaiting of Bach motets with three Tenebrae Responsories and other works by our top choral composer, James MacMillan, worked well until the last work on the programme. Then they had to go and spoil it all by premature ejaculation.Personal context: as an agnostic, I value this stage in Easter week as a time for meditation on suffering, compassion and death, never more needed than now. Two year ago, when concert halls were Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Akram Khan Company promises “a magical dance-theatre retelling of Kipling’s classic”, and that’s more or less what you get. The choreography is striking and inventive, the dancing and staging superb.What work less well is the overall tone, which, for a piece that announces it is aimed at the world’s children as well as its adults, is pretty dark and doom-laden (there is no guidance here of its suitability for younger age groups), then veers towards levity, as if to balance out the gloom.Most older children, of course, won't be fazed by this bleak vision and don’t need telling that the planet Read more ...
Gary Naylor
People can’t find the food they want in the shops. Nobody has enough money. Public services are under pressure. And there’s a big Royal occasion to take our minds off things.England 2023? Nah, England 1947, as rationing applies to meat and fruit rather than toilet rolls and lemonade and it’s Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s wedding rather than their eldest son’s coronation that is bringing out the bunting. Based on the much-loved Alan Bennett film, A Private Function, and 12 years on from its West End run, Betty Blue Eyes is the tale of a pig that’s not kosher, and nor is the situation Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is it possible to successfully challenge naturalism in British theatre today? At a time when audiences crave feelgood dramas, uplifting musicals and classic well-made plays, there is very little room for experimental writing.Still, the Downstairs studio space of the Hampstead Theatre, manages to continue to offer an opportunity to go beyond the usual naturalism of traditional storytelling, and this is exemplified by Cordelia Lynn’s new play, which is an experiment in new writing, partly a family play and partly a symbolist drama. While not entirely successful, it does have its good points.The Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Sometimes one admires a film without wholly loving it because the high level of craft displayed on screen holds at arms’ length emotional engagement with the story. LOLA is that kind of movie – an ingeniously devised tale of time-travel, set in 1941 and replete with World War Two newsreels that have been altered with all the digital skills its makers could summon.It’s not quite deepfake, but the result is impressive and intriguing, even if all this dazzling artifice gets in the way of connecting with the central characters.Stefani Martini and Emma Appleton play a pair of orphaned Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Blake Rose clearly wasn’t leaving anything to chance. The support act bounded onstage draped in a Saltire, and soon brought up his days growing up in Aberdeen before moving to Australia. That Scottish upbringing helped inspire one of his songs, “Sweet Caledonia”, and going by the lively reaction he received from the youthful Glasgow crowd they were glad to take him as their own.Musically, it was a tougher sell, and he came across like the result of a record company executive barking out demands to find another Sam Fender, but poppier and smoother. The melodies were pleasant, but a knockout Read more ...