Reviews
Laura de Lisle
The best version of Twelfth Night I’ve seen is not called Twelfth Night. For sheer knockabout entertainment, nothing beats the 2006 film She’s the Man. But Sean Holmes’ production for the Globe’s summer season, brimming with song and physical comedy, comes a worthy second.Michelle Terry (pictured below) is endlessly charismatic, drawing us into caring about Viola from the moment she darts out of the groundlings dressed as Elizabeth I. Not many people can pull off enormous green and yellow breeches; Terry makes it look easy. (And she’s the Globe’s Artistic Director, so she’s running the whole Read more ...
Matt Wolf
You've got to hand it to the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park: this venue never simply dusts off a familiar musical title and plonks it onstage. Their commitment to reinvestigating the material, whatever it is, has done wonders for the disparate likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jerry Herman, and Rodgers and Hammerstein remain ripe for continually fresh interpretation, as Nicholas Hytner's revelatory Carousel for the National in 1992 so agelessly proved and countless further reappraisals of their canon (the Daniel Fish Oklahoma!) have since borne out, as well. But Read more ...
David Nice
To excel at one massive Brahms piano concerto in a standard concert hall is cause enough for celebration. To master two over one evening in a very unorthodox space – namely, below the roof of Peckham’s former multi-storey car park – brings the performer close to recreative genius. The vision in this case was shared between pianist mover and shaker Samson Tsoy, Bold Tendencies – the wonderful organisation which has put together a series of concerts from remarkable artists beyond even its usual ken this summer, from Isata Kanneh-Mason and the Peckham Multi-Story Orchestra to the Jess Gillam Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Sophie Taeuber-Arp gave her work titles like Movement of Lines, yet there’s nothing dull about her drawings and paintings. In her hands, the simplest compositions sizzle with tension and dance with implied motion. Animated Circles 1934 (main picture), consists of blue, grey and black circles on a white ground. The off-kilter design makes them appear to shuffle, nudge, float or bounce; you feel light-hearted and light-headed just looking at them.Even in wartime she could make her work sing. In Geometric and Undulating Lines 1941 spaghetti-like strings rise flame-like over sharp triangles; the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
In this most atypical Proms season this was actually an archetypal Proms programme: a world premiere: a neglected masterpiece and a good solid 19th-century symphony for those put off a bit by the first two. But this American-themed programme never felt run of the mill. There was a palpable energy in the hall, for both audience and orchestra, to be in the same space again. And if the extended applause at the end seemed a bit indulgent – each section, nearly each player having their own curtain-call – it was clearly born of the thrill of a return to live concert-making.The BBC National Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Producer to the stars and creator of the monstrously successful “Uptown Funk”, Mark Ronson knows a thing or two about making noises. He has combined this know-how with a laid-back knack for presenting to make this six-parter for Apple TV+, delving into the history of how developing technology has driven innovation in the music business.It’s an almost infinitely sprawling subject, but Ronson has drawn up a deluxe list of contributors to give him a hand. For instance, an eager Paul McCartney pops up in the episode about sampling to describe how the Beatles experimented with tape loops in “ Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In a normal year, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain descends mob-handed on the Royal Albert Hall for a Prom that complements the sheer quality of the young musicians’ work with joyful, raucous, roof-raising quantity. I recall a Turangalîla symphony in the other Olympic season of 2012 that rocked all Kensington with its heaven-storming, gold-medal exuberance. This summer, with caution still the proper watchword, the NYO has built its admirable “Hope Exchange” programme into a series of steps into the musical future.They begin with the members' personal dreams and ideals, and grow Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Saunders' Ferry Lane” elegantly paints a picture of revisiting an empty, out-of-season neighbourhood to reflect on an old relationship. It’s cloudy and begins raining. The grass where the couple lay is dead. Birds have flown away. The gentle arms which held the narrator are gone. “I find no present comfort for my pain” sings a forlorn Sammi Smith. Swelling strings darken the mood, as does a plaintive pedal steel.Discomfort of a different kind is addressed by Billie Jo Spears’ up-tempo “Mr Walker, It's All Over.” After leaving Garden City, Kansas for New York to work, she fetches coffee for Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
After meeting on the Genesis Sixteen Young Artist Scheme, this vibrant vocal ensemble has been rapidly gaining momentum since their debut at St John’s Smith Square in 2017. Under the direction of conductor Sarah Latto, the final concert in their UK tour was polished, poised and subtly powerful. The concert had been planned to take place in the Midland Arts Centre's Hexagon Theatre, but a last minute change put it in a gallery space, surrounded by paintings that form visual artist Caroline Walker’s Women’s Work exhibition (which, if you’re in the area, is well worth a visit on its own). It’s a Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Get to Swiss Cottage early because Bob Bailey’s set for Tom Wells's new Hampstead Downstairs play Big Big Sky is a feast for the eyes. Angie’s cafe has the scrapey chairs, the tables you know will wobble a little if you get that one (and you will) and a blackboard menu that just needs a misplaced apostrophe or two to be truly authentic. The HP sauce is by the till, not next to the salt and pepper; this is Yorkshire after all.But it’s only just Yorkshire, the Kilnsea cafe being on the edge of the city that’s always described as being on the edge of England - Hull. Were it a few yards on, Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A young film director writes a script based on his father’s life story and invites his dad to play the part. It’s an interesting gambit, given that the son, Jorge Thielen Armand left Venezuela with his mother at the age of 15 and has not returned since. His father stayed behind, so their relationship has stalled. Can it be reignited?Mo Scarpelli’s documentary follows Armand’s attempts to make the film and, in the process, rebuild his relationship with his father. Jorge Roque Thielen agrees to play himself despite not having seen the script; but the project is fraught with difficulty since, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This opener to the second series of Dominic Savage’s I Am… dramas starred Suranne Jones as the titular Victoria, an ultra-driven career woman surrounded by the trappings of material success but spinning into a dark vortex of depression. Jones’s intense performance is winning her showers of plaudits, but the film’s improvisational approach and the absence of structure or context meant that her efforts were partially wasted. The jerky, close-up shots focusing relentlessly on every twitch, grimace, or flash of panic on her face eventually induced a kind of seasickness.We were shown the Read more ...