Reviews
Aleks Sierz
Does a subjective theatre piece encourage a subjective critical response? I think it might, especially when it’s a memory play about dementia, so here goes: first I turn off the lights, then I press play. From the darkness comes jaunty music – it’s a dance class. The teacher says, “We’re not used to having a man in class, are we ladies? But you’re very welcome Mark.” Fade out, but don’t forget: at the age of 50 playwright Mark Ravenhill starts doing a ballet class at the same time as his mum, Angela, is suffering from Alzheimer’s in her mid eighties.Fragments: Mark telephones his mum in Read more ...
Robert Beale
For the newest performance of their part-postponed “Winter Season” on film, the Hallé return to their rehearsal and performance centre in Ancoats, and with the help of piano soloist-director Paul Lewis and guest leader-director Eva Thórarinsdóttir offer a display of the capability of their orchestra members as chamber musicians.So first we see again the little sequence of musicians heading through Manchester city centre to Hallé St Peter’s, and before the music starts Paul Lewis introduces Mozart’s Piano Quintet in E flat K452, and Sergio Castelló-López, clarinet, and Elena Comelli, bassoon, Read more ...
Daniel Baksi
“This book is a journey of historical discovery, set out sequentially in order to convey a sense of what has changed over time.” Add to this sentence, the title of the work from which it is taken, The Art Museum in Modern Times, and you’ll probably have a reasonable sense of Charles Saumarez Smith’s latest book. Simple, effective – Smith presents us with a series of case studies of museums, placed in chronological order according to each’s unveiling. Following a brief introduction to the Traditional Museum (“bastions of intellectual and scholarly conservatism, dedicated to the understanding Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“Your task is to imagine the future.” That’s what the citizens of Assembly, a new streamed production performed and devised by the Donmar Warehouse’s Local Company, are told. It can be anything they like, so long as they make it together – which is the catch, of course. Since when did a citizens’ assembly ever agree on anything? Assembly marks the Donmar Local Company’s first production, co-created with writer Nina Segal and director Joseph Hancock. It was originally scheduled for 2020, but the virus intervened, rendering it basically a beefed-up Zoom production. The technical Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Praise gets heaped on the already well known. And that often leaves others in the shadows. I’m not saying that Abdullah Ibrahim doesn’t deserve the accolades – notably, “our Mozart” from Nelson Mandela – but there have been other genius level South African pianists: one was Moses Molelekwa who died at just 27. The other is the very great Bheki Mseleku (1955-2008).Mseleku’s album Timelessness, recorded with a host of American jazz super-heavyweights in 1993, has been widely hailed as a masterpiece. And this newly-released solo piano album Beyond the Stars (Tapestry Works), recorded in Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
Let’s face it, most adaptations of classic novels are disappointingly pedestrian. They are so middle-of-the-road – fancy-dress characters speaking fancy-dress dialogue in fancy-dress plots. But there are memorable exceptions: Amy Heckerling’s film Clueless brings Jane Austen’s Emma squealing into our world, while Martin Crimp’s Misanthrope and Cyrano de Bergerac do the same for theatre’s Molière and Rostand. Now the team that delighted me with their version of Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up! last year are back and they have dusted off Oscar Wilde’s 1890 classic, with a little help from Joanna Read more ...
David Nice
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time stalk this haunting dream of a Rosenkavalier. The love games of teenager Octavian and his experienced mistress the Marschallin are sexy and plausible; the comedy of ridiculous Baron Ochs keeps a low profile, but stays real and turns out funny in unexpected places; a winged old gentleman (Ingmar Thilo) embodies the second and fourth manifestations. Does he make up for all the detail in the minor and non-singing roles shed by director Barrie Kosky? For me, yes. Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto for Richard Strauss, firmly rooted in the detail of a mid-18th century Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Jed Mercurio’s tangly police corruption thriller Line of Duty has become one of the jewels in the BBC’s drama crown, and this sixth (and possibly last) series has finally arrived on BBC One after a steadily growing crescendo of pre-publicity. Can it live up to the hype?Experience teaches that trying to judge a series by the opening episode is often a fool’s errand, and the wily Mercurio knows his game intricately. Was episode one brilliant? Possibly, though not necessarily – but it was crammed with clues, feints, intimations of doubt and a variety of threats and warnings, as if to soften up Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Fawlty Towers: For the RecordA special, limited-edition vinyl release of the entire comedy series written by John Cleese and Connie Booth to celebrate the BBC sitcom's 40th anniversary. The 12 episodes offer a masterclass in comedy writing and performance – even if they now come with a trigger warning, that some of humour is “of its time”. Much of the special linking narration for the six white vinyl LPs – by hapless waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs) – is unique to the vinyl version and hasn’t been available since the original pressings. As well as Cleese appearing as harassed hotelier Basil Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Nick Broomfield made his first film 50 years ago, and his career over those five decades (and some three dozen works) has been as distinctive, and distinguished as that of any British documentary maker. It has ranged from early films on British social themes, through overseas journeys, often around America and more extreme subjects such as penal incarceration (1982’s Tattooed Tears, his first work outside England, and his studies of serial killer Aileen Wuornos on death row) but also his including his remarkable 1991 The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife about the white South African Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I See Your Face” opens with a short burst of Phil Spector-ish tambourine rattling. The sort of thing also employed by the early Jesus & Mary Chain. Then, a cascading folk-rock guitar paves the way for a disembodied voice singing over a spooky one-finger keyboard line and chugging, reverbed guitar. Occasionally, what sounds like a syn drum goes “pff.”“Gorgeous Weather” is equally remarkable, equally other-worldly. A spiralling, distant-sounding creation, its subterranean feel suggests an oncoming storm rather than what’s usually thought of as gorgeous weather.Then there’s “There's A...” “ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The 2020 Formula One season was all set to start in Australia last March when it was derailed by the Covid emergency. The F1 organisers insisted that they’d get the racing back on track somehow, and what sounded like foolhardy bravado was justified when they successfully staged a 17-race championship between July and December.It proved to be a surprisingly exciting and often emotional season, with all kinds of human and political dramas woven through the action, and Netflix’s ubiquitous Drive to Survive crew was there to catch all the nuances. F1 had an advantage over most other sports Read more ...