Reviews
Veronica Lee
London's weather – a day of huge downpours – underlined the point that we should be rushing inside as entertainment venues (in parts of the UK, at least) reopened. It was lovely to be back at 21Soho, a welcoming and well run venue, particularly as its opening night was for anti-violence charity Reclaim These Streets. Proceeds will be distributed by the charity Rosa.Sarah Keyworth was on terrific form as the host, grateful to be finally working to a crowd who appeared in real-life form rather than on the other side of a Zoom screen. Although, as she wrily pointed out, even on Zoom there can be Read more ...
David Nice
It began with a sense of wonder, not just from the Barbican's socially distanced audience but also from the stage, at “that sound you make with your hands”, as Simon Rattle put it in what he said was a novelty speech before a performance. What followed was a celebration – reacquaintance with the instruments of the orchestra in Britten’s brilliant set of variations and a fugue on a Purcell theme, wistful beauty from Fauré, rumbustiousness with a dash of poignancy from Dvořák.Perhaps The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra should be renamed Everyone’s Guide to Orchestral Delights, which come Read more ...
Sarah Kent
I wonder how many relationships have foundered during lockdown and how many have suffered the humiliation of being dumped over the phone or via social media? Filmed during the pandemic, Pedro Almodovar’s intense, half-hour short The Human Voice may not be a direct response to Covid-19, yet it captures the aching loneliness of enforced separation and the longing for intimacy. The film was inspired by Jean Cocteau’s eponymous play. First performed in Paris in 1930, it features a woman saying goodbye on the phone to her lover, who is about to marry someone Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
You could hardly call this back to normal at London’s premier dance house. For a start, there was too much red plush visible in the stalls, not all of it the result of COVID-safe spacing. There were prefatory onstage speeches and a filmed thank you from Tamaro Rojo, the artistic director who must have suffered a thousand deaths over the past year – at least up to the point English National Ballet was singled out to receive £3 million from the government’s Culture Recovery Fund. Applause and cheers erupted at every mention of dancers or musicians or those more often under-thanked technicians, Read more ...
David Nice
It looked as if the Royal Opera might be trying to keep its distance with the first new production since lockdown. After all, Mozart’s last opera – only the Overture and March of the Priests in The Magic Flute remained to be composed in the fatal year of 1791 after the 18 days spent working on Tito – seems to have been fairly minimally staged for Emperor Leopold II's Prague coronation as King of Bohemia. When the composer’s widow Constanze revived the work after his death, it was as a series of concert performances (with Beethoven playing a Mozart concerto between the acts on at least one Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Things got out of hand at theartsdesk on Vinyl this month and these reviews run to 10,000 words. That's around a fifth of The Great Gatsby. It's because there's so much good music that deserves the words, from jazz to metal to pure electronic strangeness. That said, this is the last time theartsdesk on Vinyl will reach this kind of ludicrous length. So enjoy it. Dig deep. There's something for everyone. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Fratellis Half Drunk Under a Full Moon (Cooking Vinyl)Look, I’m the first one to gleefully, mercilessly dance on the grave of so-called landfill indie (the wave Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Many a director might have considered that televising Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad was impossible, but Barry Jenkins, Oscar-winning director of Moonlight, has proved it can be done. His 10-part series for Amazon Prime is a remarkable achievement in its authorial depth and cinematic scope. The only cloud on its undoubtedly award-winning horizon is the fact that large chunks of it are almost too horrific to watch. The cast found some of the material so disturbing that Jenkins had a mental health counsellor on set.Traumatised responses were probably inevitable, given that Read more ...
Tom Baily
Success for the Belgian-Dutch crime series Undercover has led Netflix to produce an origin story for the show’s drug lord character Ferry Bouman (Frank Lammers). While this may be a dream come true for a portion of the show’s diehard fans, this formulaic movie is stalling, predictable and riddled with every gangster cliché in the book.Before he made it big, Ferry Bouman was the right hand man to one of Amsterdam’s senior drug kings Ralph Brink. After their gang is brutally attacked and Ralph’s son is killed, Ferry is sent on a revenge mission. He finds himself in a mobile camping community Read more ...
Heather Neill
There is a promising production struggling to get out of this muddled concept. Creation Theatre (here partnered with Watford Palace) is well known for innovative, site-specific pieces, one of which –The Tempest – was adapted for the screen, including interactive elements, last year. I missed this, but reviews suggest it worked well.That is not the case here. This may be because of the nature of the play: is it really possible to subvert the tragedy and bring about a happy ending? Or make any meaningful contribution to it? Promised a choose-your-own-adventure, I did make some decisions, but Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Heckling at a drive-in gig is rather pointless, don't you think? The audience, mostly listening through their car radios, will be unable to hear the interruption, while the comic can deliver a slam-dunk put-down that we can all enjoy. And so it proved at Mark Watson's Carpool Comedy Club as it pulled into Culden Faw Estate, between Henley and Marlow on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border.The heckler was annoyed at headliner Nish Kumar's political gags, which were as bracing as the unseasonal weather. And whether or not you share them, fair play to the guy for sticking to his beliefs while Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With the Spiral Scratch EP, Buzzcocks became the first British band of the punk rock era to issue a do-it-yourself seven-inch. Everything was organised and paid for by the band: the recording session, the manufacture of the record and its sleeve, its design. It hit shops in January 1977.Four months on, in May 1977, The Outsiders became the first British band of the punk rock era to issue a do-it-yourself album. It was as significant a move as that taken by Buzzcocks, but is less lauded. The label the Wimbledon-based three-piece created for their records was named Raw Edge Records and Calling Read more ...
New York City Ballet 2021 Spring Gala online review - Balanchine and Robbins shine in a dark theatre
Jenny Gilbert
It’s official. Masks are coming off across America while theatres remain dark. Over here, theatres are about to re-open and masks must be worn. An identical situation gives rise to different responses prompted by local preoccupations. Local preoccupations are at work in ballet too. Witness the 2021 Spring Gala performance put out digitally by New York City Ballet. Nothing says NYCB like the mid-20th-century choreography of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. And nothing says NYCB like having Chanel sponsor your first-ever digital Spring Gala, and a Hollywood name direct it.Happy to relate, Read more ...