Reviews
stephen.walsh
Like certain other opera companies, WNO has leant in recent years towards popular shows of one kind or another. In their case this is not mere pandering to the Valleys coach parties, but a genuine attempt to assert an identity through an exploration of local south Welsh history. Elena Langer’s Rhondda Rips It Up (2018) was a far from studious romp through the colourful life of the Newport suffragette Margaret Mackworth, Viscountess Rhondda. This time they have gone up-valley and, in Blaze of Glory, come up with a sparkling entertainment about the closing of coal mines in the 1950s and Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It is a sign of Ladytron’s longevity and relevance that their support acts are now performers clearly inspired by the quartet. Elisabeth Elektra, here picked for opening the night in her home city, may not have the icy cool of the evening’s headliners, but the lineage of her buoyantly loud electro pop was clear.At its best, she showcased a wickedly clear groove, at worst her vocal was submerged by the live drummer pounding away behind her. However it was a lively, enjoyable start to affairs.That noise, though, was merely a light blow compared to the hammering assault when Ladytron themselves Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
It would seem unfitting to report on Nonclassical’s event – happening? – in the Barbican Conservatory on Sunday with anything resembling a conventional review. So instead I shall treat this free-form “experience” to a non-sequential response, in the form of 19 observations: things I saw, heard or noticed.1. Carola Bauckholt’s Doppelbelichtung required Linda Jankowska to produce a range of unlikely sounds from her violin, viz.: creaks, squeaks, whistles, swirls, swoops, wails, whines and rasps. They hung in the air, being broadcast in loops via speakers hidden in suspended violins. 2. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The booklet coming with The Albums 1974-76 notes Johnny Rotten saw Heavy Metal Kids live and that the Sex Pistol “ripped off” their frontman Gary Holton. It's an assertion in keeping with a default option where the HMKs are referred to as a precursor band to punk – one helping to lay the table for it.This three-CD clamshell set offers a chance to dig into where the band fit in. Elsewhere in the booklet's text, The Damned's Brian James is quoted saying Holton and Co were “ahead of their time.” HMK’s keyboard player Danny Peyronel declares “we were one of the first bands to have the term Read more ...
Gary Naylor
“Darkly comic thrillers” (as they like to say) set in Ireland tracking how families, or quasi-families, fall apart under pressure are very much in vogue just now. Whether The Banshees of Inisherin will garner the Oscars haul it hardly deserves remains to be seen, but set 60 years later in a different Civil War, I suspect Under The Black Rock will not be troubling theatre’s award ceremonies next year. During the euphemistically named The Troubles, a Belfast mother loses her son, having seen him follow in his father’s footsteps into the Provisional IRA. Her daughter, wanting to prove Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Jessica Winter is clearly a hardy soul. The Portsmouth singer made a point of shedding her jacket and top as her support set went on, a bold choice given the typically unpredictable Glasgow weather was serving up freezing snow outside at the time.It was hard to decipher if her music was as adventurous, as it shifted from dance heavy bangers to melodramatic pop that thrived on theatrical gestures and movement, but was hindered by choppy sound that left her vocal inaudible entirely for one number. She did, however, handle proceedings with a flair that bodes well.There were moments when Lucia Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
For almost half a century, from the mid-1960s until her death in 2021, Janet Malcolm was a staff writer on the New Yorker where her meticulous reporting and provocatively strong opinions won a devoted readership. Yet she began her career as a kind of hack, writing magazine fillers about shopping and design.No doubt these routine weekly assignments, and later a photography column, helped her to develop the keen eye for detail that she brought to long-form journalism. In countless articles and a dozen genre-bending non-fiction books, including In the Freud Archives (1984), The Journalist and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
For fans of conspiracy theories, this three-part examination of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 is irresistible, though the continuing anguish of friends and relatives of the 239 people aboard the flight makes for some painful viewing. The bare facts are that the aircraft, a Boeing 777, took off on 8 March 2014 on an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing, but it hadn’t been airborne for an hour before it suddenly vanished from air traffic control radar screens. Military radar data subsequently showed that it had made an inexplicable turn from Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The opening shots in The Middle Man show a brooding urban landscape lit only by refinery flames at night. The streets are deserted, with a lone car scuttling across them at an intersection. It’s Nowhereville, North America, though officially it's called Karmack. This vision of decay suggests anything but a comedy lies ahead. In fact, it’s hard to say precisely what kind of film this is. It's definitely a morality tale in which individuals contend with powers beyond their control: the law, the church, the medical profession, fate. But a comedy? Only the kind Dante wrote, perhaps: a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Can lightning strike twice? Very much so, when it comes to Shirley Valentine, Willy Russell's much-revived solo play which I saw back in the day with its London and Broadway originator, Pauline Collins, who went on to receive a 1990 Oscar nomination for the film. Now along comes Sheridan Smith, who is very nearly the same age as the unhappy Liverpudlian housewife and mother who, age 42, reluctantly travels to Greece and into a new life. And, remarkably, Smith not only stands alongside fond memories of Collins in the role but quite often surpasses them. For years, Smith's emotional Read more ...
David Nice
Commuting between London and Dublin has its fascinations.10 days ago, I saw for the first time at the Southwark Playhouse’s Elephant Theatre, heart in mouth during most of it, Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce, his first Edinburgh Festival Fringe First winner in 2007. Then to Dublin’s Gate Theatre last night for its immediate successor in the Walsh canon and 2008 Edinburgh triumph, The New Electric Ballroom.You could say these possible masterpieces form a diptych, though in an ideal world the substantial dramas would be played on alternating nights, never on the same evening, and despite riffs Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Crybabies – a sketch group comprised of Michael Clarke, James Gault and Ed Jones – were nominated for best newcomer for Danger Parade, a brilliant parody of Second World War adventure stories, at the 2019 Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Their second show, Bagbeard, was another critical success at last year's Fringe and is now having its second run at the Soho Theatre. It's a lot of fun.“This is a story of hope, love – and monsters,” says Jones at the top of the show. Like his compadres he plays several roles, necessitating super-quick costume changes behind the on-stage cloth. Bagbeard is a sci Read more ...