Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Contrary to the title’s implication, there initially seems to be little movement in Arch of Motion. A note is held on an organ. Then another note comes in and is also held. Chords build up gradually. Maybe one or two ascending or descending notes come and go. And that seems to be it.But when Track Five arrives, the mood brightens and the sonic pallete becomes more broad. The drone on “Mending (Light Pressure)” might be an analogue synth. Next, “Conversation” adds a breathy wordless voice – celestial, wraith-like. After this, the crepuscular “Inhale” features what seem to be actual words. In Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ennio Morricone’s collaboration with director Giuseppe Tornatore on 1988’s Cinema Paradiso was one of the countless highlights of his career, and it’s Tornatore who has masterminded this sprawling documentary tribute to the composer, who died in July 2020.Apparently it took him five globe-trotting years to amass interviews with a huge list of Morricone’s admirers and collaborators, so perhaps it’s no great surprise that he seems to have found editing his material into a manageable shape a daunting task.Tornatore’s decision to plough doggedly through Morricone’s career, from his days as a Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“You’re mad to try and climb a holy mountain,” says Jomdoe, wife of Sherpa Ngada, as they argue over whether it’s more important to respect the body of God, aka the mountain Kumbhakarna in eastern Nepal, or to take the money earned from a dangerous climbing expedition that could help pay for their son’s education.This beautiful, meditative film by director and climber Eliza Kubarska (K2: Touching the Sky) captures the power of the Himalayas with great intensity. Plot strands, though interesting, pale into insignificance in the face of Kumbhakarna, 7710 metres high, as yet unsullied by humans Read more ...
Gary Naylor
One of the more irritating memes (it’s a competitive field, I know) is the “Name a more iconic couple” appearing over a photo of Posh and Becks, or Harry and Megan, or Leo and whoever. I’ve always been tempted to close the discussion down with a photo of Bonnie and Clyde, because couples do not come more iconic than they are. So it’s a surprise to discover that Nick Winston’s production is the first ever musical dedicated to them in the West End, reviving a show that was in and out of Broadway ten years ago quicker than the Barrow gang were in and out of a Wells Fargo bank. Since then, Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Nora is seven, and it's her first day at school. Big brother Abel, already enrolled in their local primary, promises to find her at playtime. Prised away from her father's embrace, tearful Nora is set up from the opening moments of Playground as a sensitive child.The cold blue colour grading, atmospheric sound design, and choice of camera perspective – always from the height of a child – immerses the audience from the very first moment in Nora’s experiences. No score distracts from the cacophony of the playground, the overwhelming echo and crash of the swimming pool. Quasi- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Teenage Fanclub open their set with “Home”, the first single from their last album Endless Arcade. It’s followed by the title track, “Endless Arcade”. The first was written by Norman Blake, the second by Raymond McGinley – the album’s sole songwriters.Earlier, a Teenage Fanclub album would also have featured songs by another founder, Gerard Love. He left the band towards the end of 2018 leaving Blake and McGinley as the sole original members. April 2021’s terrific Endless Arcade became their first album without Love. A few weeks ago, continuity was confirmed when the "I Left a Light on" Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
David Alden’s Lohengrin is back at Covent Garden for a first revival. The defining image the first time round, in 2018, was of the ending, a political rally for King Henry’s regime, with Lohengrin and the swan as its icons. That felt crude – a two-dimensional morality, and tangential to the story.That still smarts, but Alden’s ideas (revived without noticeable changes by Peter Relton) are more diverse than they first seemed and repay a second viewing. Musically, the revival is quite strong, with impressive leads but a weaker supporting cast; a fitful ensemble effort where the first run was Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
The title is so long that the Royal Court’s neon red lettering only renders the first three words, followed by a telling ellipsis. But lyrical new play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy lives up to its weighty name.Writer-director Ryan Calais Cameron shows us Black masculinity in all its nuances and contradictions, presented by six actors so naturally charming it’s impossible not to fall in love with them. This is an odyssey through Black masculinity, a complex navigation of a sea of troubles and expectations and joy and love. Line by line, each man’s soul Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then Boris Johnson has played the whole sodding orchestra. Between the parties, the lying, the enabling of Russian financial interests and the record European Covid death-toll he has not just traduced Pitt, he has tap-danced on Churchill’s grave in his narcissistic attempt to assert gravitas.It seems more than fitting, then, that Mike Bartlett has revived the most decadent form of theatre to chronicle London in the age of Johnson. After decades of Puritanism, the Restoration encouraged laissez-faire culture for the lazy and disaffected – here we see a city Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
I expected the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland’s Usher Hall concert to be jam-packed with a joyful melee of admiring friends and relatives. This is a vast orchestra of over 100, and it wouldn’t take that many aunts and uncles to fill the Usher’s cavernous spaces, but in the event the audience for this inspiring and diverse programme was disappointingly thin. I was told it was a tough sell, being Good Friday, the beginning of a holiday weekend, and with Covid restrictions still in place in Scotland for another 72 hours or so. Better, by all accounts, in Glasgow the following night.The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What’s in the groove isn’t necessarily the end of the story. Sound is fixed into a record when it’s pressed. Get it revolving on a turntable, dump the needle onto it and what’s heard is what’s intended to be heard. It’s fixed. Nonetheless, DJs realised a record can be part of the route to something else, something which becomes their creation.Saturno 2000 - La Rebajada de Los Sonideros 1962-1983 celebrates a previously obscure form of sonic manipulation. In Mexico, DJs were playing records at a lower rpm than the standard 33 1/3 or 45 bringing their tempo down to make them more easy to dance Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Having not heard a Passion live for several years I decided to do two in close succession, to compare pieces from different ends of the musical spectrum.Bach’s 1724 setting, a masterpiece of the baroque, dramatises the story through emotional engagement and expressive characterisation. Arvo Pärt’s Passio (completed 1982) is by contrast severe and minimalist, its declamation deliberately flat and detached, until a blazing climax, one of the hardest earned releases in all music.I borrowed the CD of Passio from my local library as a teenager, when the Hilliard Ensemble’s premiere recording first Read more ...