Reviews
Mark Kidel
At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before suggesting they sing along, she plunges straight in, a minute or so into chanting “a love supreme”, and gets everyone to join her in what can only be described as a communal act of devotion. This is a kind of high-wire daring, and it works, suggesting as well that she's assured of a large group of listeners for whom she can do no wrong.Now well-established as a purveyor of spiritual jazz and traditional South Indian chants, born and raised in New York Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM is a triple album marking the 50th anniversary of the first release on the titular label. That record was a four-track, seven-inch EP by the rough, Rolling Stones-ish pub rockers The Count Bishops. It came out in November 1975.Setting the trend for what was around the corner with punk, not only was The Count Bishops EP on an independent label it also came in a picture sleeve. The label was an outgrowth of the Rock On record stall and shop. The folks behind the imprint – Roger Armstrong, Ted Carroll and Trevor Churchill – all had backgrounds Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
ITV continues its passion for docudramas about injustice, which you can’t blame it for after the rip-roaring success of Mr Bates vs the Post Office. The issue in I Fought the Law is, from one angle, of national (even International) importance, though compared to the persecution of hundreds of innocent postmasters, some of whom committed suicide, its cause is a rarer bird.The person fighting the law is Ann Ming (Sheridan Smith), a feisty mother from Billingham, near Middlesbrough, whose daughter Julie, her oldest child, goes missing in 1989. It takes over two months for her body to be Read more ...
David Nice
It’s weird, if wonderful, that vibrant young composers at the end of the 19th century should have featured death so prominently in their hero-sagas. Assume their inspiration came from Wagner’s Siegmund, Siegfried and Tristan. But Sibelius, Mahler and Richard Strauss took very different paths on the route to obliteration. That’s only one of many things that helps to make Hannu Lintu’s three-year exploration of Sibelius in the context of his predecessors and contemporaries so fascinating.The Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s new Artistic Partner (pictured below by Antti Sihlman) not only took on Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The Ukraine war is not the only place of horror in the world, but it does present a challenge to theatre makers who want to respond to events that dominate the news. And which make us all feel powerless, including our leaders. Instead of staging a play such as Bad Roads, Ukrainian playwright Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s savage 2017 account of the conflict, the Royal Court has chosen a meta-theatrical and metaphorical response. Adapted from the 2019 book of poems by Ukrainian-American author Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic is a contemporary fable of war, atrocity and resistance. A collaboration Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Laura Benanti has been enchanting Broadway audiences for several decades now, and London has this week been let in on the secret that recently charmed playgoers at this summer's Edinburgh Festival: the comedienne perhaps best known in some circles for her wicked impersonations of Melania Trump can hold her own in a solo show that mixes self-deprecation and determination in equal measure.The first quality is there in the show's faintly damning subtitle, Nobody Cares, which was offered up by one of Benanti's two young daughters - her children so clearly the apple of their mother's eye that you Read more ...
Robert Beale
Manchester Camerata is enhancing its reputation for pioneering with three performances featuring Nick Martin’s new Violin Concerto, which it has commissioned, two of them in art galleries rather than conventional music venues.So the concerto had its world premiere in The Whitworth, Manchester’s university-linked gallery, with the second performance at The Hepworth in Huddersfield. There’s a reason for that: Martin has taken his inspiration from “a carved torso-sized, cradle-like form, in elm, with nine strings of fishing line” by Barbara Hepworth: it’s called Landscape Sculpture.In it ( Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“I never abandoned you,” says Jule (Ophélia Kolb; Call My Agent!) to her 10-year-old daughter Claire (Jasmine Kalisz Saurer), setting a fairly low bar as far as motherhood is concerned.Swiss-American director Jasmin Gordon’s first feature, with a screenplay by Julien Bouissoux, is a compelling, though too mysterious, portrait of a single mother versus society. Set in a wealthy town in the mountainous Lower Valais in Switzerland, Jule, a woman on the margins, gazes out from her window at the murmuring trees that, in a hypnotic, recurring motif, seem to offer a portal for escape.She lives in a Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Fans of the US version of The Office may wonder what happened to the assorted oddballs of Dunder Mifflin, proud creators of paper products in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They will be none the wiser after watching the pilot episode of The Paper, though they will certainly want to stick around for this very welcome spinoff. Its format is much the same as before (one of its writers, Greg Daniels, wrote the original US Office): a film crew is stalking workers in a sleepy office, who regularly talk to the camera, betraying their feelings and their colleagues. Here the business is a moribund Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Now in its third year, Edinburgh Psych Fest returned to multiple venues in the old town and the city’s southside for 2025; namely Summerhall, Queen’s Hall, The Mash House and Sneaky Pete’s. Offering a day long feast of psych-tinged sounds, Manchester-based promoters Now Wave brought a mix of bigger names and lesser-known bands to these various stages.Opening with a set from English experimental rockers The Moonlandingz, the band brought an irreverent humour to their set, with lead singer Lias Saoudi (who also fronts alt-rock group Fat White Family) joked that they had the "worst slot of the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Ever wondered if there was one moment when in-yer-face theatre started? Well, yes there was; there was one play that kicked off that whole 1990s sensibility, a drama that had a direct influence on Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Jez Butterworth, and an ongoing inspiration for countless others. That moment was January 1991, and the play was Philip Ridley’s The Pitchfork Disney.Now revived in the suitably claustrophobic subterranean space of the King’s Head Theatre, the legendary 90-minute real-time story is set in an East End flat where Presley and Haley Stray, 28-year-old “shut in” twins, are Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The annual Supersonic Festival is a major jewel in Birmingham’s musical crown – but not, it seems, one that is particularly valued by the city’s establishment and more powerful decision-makers. Based in the relatively bohemian area of Digbeth, and despite receiving international plaudits and recognition, time and again it is forced to fight for its very existence.Each year, venues that have been traditionally used to house performances, events and workshops by this wonderful celebration are closed down. Rents for the remaining spaces spiral into the cosmos and property developers flex their Read more ...