Reviews
Markie Robson-Scott
This is a novel, says Patricia Lockwood in her Twitter feed, about being very inside the internet and then being very outside of it. At first, I thought the title referred to aspects of the internet and its disappearing history, as in, “'MySpace was an entire life’, she nearly wept at a bookstore in Chicago… ‘And it is lost, lost, lost.’”I started to think about the other lost things that no one talks about now: Compuserve, Netscape, Altavista, Ask Jeeves, all those pre-Google search engines, and the world before the iPhone, when the idea of looking up the name of an actor you’d forgotten as Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Bavarian State Opera has led the way for live performances and associated broadcasts during the pandemic. Their series of weekly “Montagsstück” events have presented innovative chamber operas, specifically for web streaming. Their next goal is full-size opera with a live audience. That is not possible yet, so instead they are premiering a new production of Weber’s Der Freischütz. Initially it is just for the cameras, but when the doors finally open, it will be ready to go.The production is directed and designed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. He has spent the last 20 years cultivating a reputation as Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Witless punk” was the weekly music paper Sounds assessment of Disco Zombies’s first single “Drums Over London”. NME’s Paul Morley was more measured, declaring it “ill-disciplined slackly structured new pop but the chorus alone makes up for it.” That was March 1979. Heard now, “Drums Over London” comes across as energised pop-punk with a sing-along chorus and a wacky bent.The band’s next release followed in September 1979. Considering when it shops, the Invisible EP’s second track “Punk a Go Go” made little sense. Issuing a punk novelty when the world had moved on was perverse. However, the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
An initially off-putting erotic comedy thriller about the relationship between a webcam dominatrix, “Scarlet” (Julia Fox), and the Internet gambler, Jack (Peter Vack), who becomes obsessed with her, Ben Hozie’s sexually graphic PVT CHAT becomes increasingly resonant as it proceeds – and surprisingly endearing. While mistress and slave are stepping in and out of their roles, they forge a tender online connection from what Jack believes is a distance of 3,000 miles – he lives in downtown Manhattan, she works (she says) out of San Francisco, The interaction of these hustlers elicits Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The top-selling vinyl at independent UK record shops in 2020 was Idles' latest album (closely followed by Yungblud, which is impressive, given his only came out in December!). The Top 10 is dominated by indie, rock and retro but, actually, the bigger picture is that limited runs by music in all styles are selling across the board. Our first theartsdesk on Vinyl of 2021 showcases, as ever, the enormous range of music pouring out on plastic. From Bond themes to blues rock to Afro-experimental and much more, it’s all here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHAlostmen Kologo (Strut)This album is punkin’. Read more ...
David Nice
Christmas isn’t just for Christmas, Daisy Evans’s bargain-basement fir-trees-and-tinsel production of Humperdinck’s evergreen masterpiece seems to be telling us. Filmed in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal last December, the February online premiere doesn’t exactly, as she claims in her intro, tell us “why live theatre is valuable” - hint: it isn't, wasn't streamed live - though sure enough, we’re all “desperate to get back to it” (who’s applauding at the end, incidentally? There can’t have been an audience). I’d skip the first three minutes of sales pitch and go straight to the Overture.Which, with a Read more ...
Heather Neill
The story of Romeo and Juliet is well known, worth revisiting endlessly and always relevant. But there is another story here: the making of the piece using innovative digital technology including CGI, to keep actors and creative team safe in a pandemic. The actors didn't meet (except for Sam Tutty and Emily Redpath, the two leads, who had one, Covid-tested, day together), neither did they visit the Palace Theatre in Manchester, yet this production appears to use the whole building – stage, auditorium, bar and costume store.In a studio much smaller than the theatre, over hundreds of hours Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Good Grief, a new show from American screenwriter and playwright Lorien Haynes, can’t work out what it wants to be. It’s billed as an “online filmed production”. Its stars, Sian Clifford (fresh from a BAFTA win for Fleabag) and Nikesh Patel (last seen in Mindy Kaling’s new version of Four Weddings and a Funeral), are acting for a big auditorium, despite their TV chops. But it was filmed, with a masked-up crew, and is being broadcast as a recording. So what is it, then? First and foremost, a show that lives up to its title. We follow Cat (Clifford, pictured below) and Adam (Patel) in Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Though the global pandemic has brought about an unprecedented degree of isolation, it’s also, in unusual ways, brought us together too. Visiting New York’s Metropolitan Opera House is currently an impossible dream - the house is still completely dark. However, that’s not stopping the Met from bringing a wealth of concerts from across the world to a global audience. Some of its biggest names, including Joyce DiDonato, Bryn Terfel and Jonas Kaufmann, have given recitals from locations as unique as a historic Washington mansion, a castle in Oslo and Brecon Cathedral in Wales. Saturday’s recital Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Seated at the harpsichord, Maxim Emelyanychev introduces this concert in charmingly fractured English. “Hello from Queen’s Hall in Edimbourg, today with chamber group of musicians from Scottish Chamber Orchestra…” But he falters, the camera cuts away, and there follows a mumbled digression on whether the first piece is actually by Hasse, or maybe Richter. Poised with their instruments, the assembled string quintet looks puzzled, and then the music begins, and it’s clear that whatever skill Emelyanychev (pictured below) may lack as an orator is more than outweighed by his skill as a Read more ...
James Dowsett
CLR James came to London from Trinidad in 1932, clutching the manuscript of his first and only novel. He soon found work, writing about cricket for the Manchester Guardian, as well as a political faith, revolutionary Trotskyism, which would inspire him to set aside his literary ambitions for political activism. James would instead make his name as one of the finest intellectuals of the 20th century. The Black Jacobins, his pioneering study of the Haitian Revolution, led by the charismatic, ex-slave Toussaint L'Ouverture, became a ground-breaking work of black history.Minty Alley is ultimately Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Leicester Comedy Festival, always great fun, was one of the last to be able to run fully in 2020, but this year it's not so lucky. Instead of several hundred events in and around Leicester, the 2021 iteration is an online-only version with many fewer shows of Zoom gigs and interviews.The opening show, First Night Funnies, was, I'm sad to say, a rather disappointing affair, complete with some technical glitches which are, of course, nobody's fault but added to the sense of something being thrown together rather than planned.Sikisa was a lively and friendly host who immediately connected Read more ...