Reviews
David Nice
You don’t have to be Scandinavian to act out Strindberg’s fantastical extremes at the highest level, but I’ve not seen any British performers come close to what Norwegians are giving us right now at the Coronet Theatre. Expectations ran high following Pia Tjelta’s lacerating performance in Ibsen’s Little Eyolf in 2018 and her Ellida in The Lady from the Sea the following year, and here, as then, she and her colleagues are simply stunning.The claustrophobia of the house on a tiny Swedish island where a disappointed military man and his former actor wife ritualise the love-hate of a 25-year-old Read more ...
Matt Wolf
I'm proffering just a tad less than three cheers for Allelujah, the film version of Alan Bennett's 2018 Bridge Theatre play that is also that rare screen adaptation of Bennett not to be shepherded to celluloid by his longtime friend and collaborator, Nicholas Hytner.Instead, Richard Eyre is at the helm and why not, given that Eyre was running the National Theatre when Bennett and Hytner first hit it big together? And Eyre's stewardship allows him to call upon such totemic figures from different points in his storied career – amongst them, Julia McKenzie, Jennifer Saunders, and Judi Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is it a good idea to work with your spouse? The Way Old Friends Do, a love letter to ABBA tribute bands – which premiered at the Birmingham Rep last month and now visits the Park Theatre in north London – is a joint venture by actor and first-time playwright Ian Hallard and Mark Gatiss, who is both his director and his husband. It’s a comic melodrama about cross-dressing and pop culture – and stars not only Hallard himself, but also Sara Crowe and James Bradshaw (a familiar face and voice to fans of ITV’s Endeavour, where he plays the acid-tongued pathologist).The backstory of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In European folklore, mélusine are woman from the waist up and fish or serpent below. The fabled character is first known in the 13th century. Mélusine dwell in inland water – rivers, wells and such.For the concept driving US composer/singer Cécile McLorin Salvant’s seventh album, this mélusine is married. Integral to the union is the husband, Raymondin, agreeing to not see her on Saturdays when her usually cloaked snake-like lower half is exposed. Naturally, he breaks the rule, whereupon she turns into a dragon, flees and returns only to attend her descendants – the marriage's ten male Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sometime in early October 1963 John Lennon and Paul McCartney encountered The Rolling Stones and offered them one of their songs; one which became the London blues aficionado’s second single. “I Wanna be Your Man” was duly recorded on 7 October 1963 and released on 1 November. Thanks to The Beatles, the Stones charted for the first time. A Liverpool-London, north-south divide had been breached.A supposed stylistic separation was also breached – the Londoners were purported blues purists who stood apart from the pop scene. Of course, that changed as pop can absorb anything and ambitious bands Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
On paper, the formula shouldn’t be that special. Really good music played by really good people is hardly a groundbreaking concept; but in actuality it’s seldom found with such honesty and diversity as in Pekka Kuusisto’s recent residency with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The first two of the triptych of concerts were with Americana/Folk singer and multi-instrumentalist Sam Amidon, and began with a set centred around Janáček’s First String Quartet "The Kreutzer Sonata". The quartet takes its name from a novella by Leo Tolstoy whose protagonist is an abusive and jealous husband Read more ...
Marjorie Prime, Menier Chocolate Factory review - superbly acted chiller about a contemporary crisis
Helen Hawkins
Artificial intelligence has become an even hotter topic since Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime was first staged in Los Angeles in 2014, so it’s not surprising that the play’s handling of AI is being seen as its unique selling point. (It subsequently played Off Broadway and was made into a film.) The developments Harrison features have become increasingly commonplace, especially the recent rise of the chatbot as a crafter of information; mini-robots are even being developed as “carers”. What Marjorie Prime is probing, though, seems ultimately less literal and much weightier than Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Some plays are instantly forgettable, others leave a tender fold in the memory. I well remember seeing Zinnie Harris’s evocatively titled Further Than the Furthest Thing in 2000, and marveling at its strange beauty and linguistic flair. Now revived at the Young Vic, in a beautifully visual, if tonally uncertain, production by Jennifer Tang, one of the venue’s Genesis Fellows, this version confirms my initial impression of a haunting story told in a magical way. And its welcomely diverse cast is led by Jenna Russell and Cyril Nri.Based on events that happened on Tristan da Cunha, an island in Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Neil Jordan’s take on Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is the first since Bob Rafelson’s Poodle Springs (1998), itself a lone outlier after Michael Winner’s misbegotten The Big Sleep (1978). No one seems to have considered why, or what they might add.Jordan is an Irish magic realist at his best, a gauzy poet around bloody themes. His ambitions here are more modest on an honest job of work. Liam Neeson, his friend and star in Michael Collins and Breakfast On Pluto, wanted to play Marlowe, William Monahan provided a script from John Banville’s Chandler estate-sanctioned novel The Black-Eyed Read more ...
Saskia Baron
There’s a huge amount to admire in Rye Lane, a new romcom set in south London. It’s the first feature directed by Raine Allen-Miller, who has conjured up a love letter to the neighbourhoods she grew up in. The street markets and much-loved Peckhamplex cinema, Brockwell Park with its walled garden and hilltop views, Brixton’s arcades with their mix of food and fabrics from all over the world, are all captured here in eye-popping colour. It’s refreshing to see this part of the city in all its multi-cultural glory and to escape the well-worn tourist landmarks that usually signify Read more ...
David Nice
This longest, wackiest and most riskily diverse of Third Symphonies became Esa-Pekka Salonen’s personal property during his years as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor. His successor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, has (in)famously said he’s not interested in Mahler. Two of the orchestra’s most distinguished visitors, Jakub Hrůša and Paavo Järvi, certainly are, so after Hrůša’s blazing Second, hopes were high for Järvi’s Third.It delivered in terms of masterful conducting, effortless in every gear change, and in all those sonorities which must have seemed outrageously novel in 1896; when the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Chris Rock knows how to tease. It’s a safe bet that many watching this show are here for one thing – to hear his version of events that took place at last year’s Oscars, when actor and erstwhile rapper Will Smith came on stage and slapped the comic. First, though, he sets it up. Not by talking about the Oscars kerfuffle per se – although he tells us “Anyone who says words hurt has never been punched in the face” – but by cheeky asides that let us know Rock is leading us there. He references Snoop Dog and Jay-Z; he’s not dissing them, he’s at pains to make clear, Read more ...