Reviews
Matt Wolf
Four Broadway denizens resolve to change the world "one lesbian at a time" in the cheerful if often cheesy The Prom, the film adaptation of a recent Broadway musical that continually reminds you of at least a half-dozen similar titles, almost all of which are better (Hairspray, to name but one). That the film is nonetheless entertaining enough is due to material that wears a generous heart on its sleeve and that wants to reach across the aisle, so to speak, to temper bigotry and small-mindedness with dollops of acceptance and a jazz hand or two.Insofar as the film often feels like a none-too- Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
With the wealth of online performances during the pandemic, it is easy to forget the regular offerings from the Wigmore Hall. The Hall found itself in a better position than most, as it was able to present its autumn schedule largely unchanged, the only programming issues arising from international travel limitations for the performers. And the finances somehow permitted them to give concerts even without audiences when restrictions dictated, but broadcast everything live on webstreams. An appeal for donations on every broadcast suggests some hardship, but the fact that these broadcasts have Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Island Records were apparently keen for half of Jamie Cullum’s first Christmas album to consist of covers, but the singer/songwriter thought otherwise, and simply said no.“When you think of all the people who have recorded “The Christmas Song” [...]”, he has said, “why should I do the same thing?”With re-heated old chestnuts off the menu, what Jamie Cullum as songwriter with his classy team of arrangers – mainly Tom Richards, and also Callum Au and Evan Jolly – have most often done in the ten tracks of The Pianoman at Christmas, recorded at Abbey Road, is to stay relatively Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The seductively breathy Joanna Lumley supplied the voice-over for this hugely entertaining romp through the history of Coronation Street, celebrating “the Diamond Jubilee of the world’s longest-running soap.” Yet wasn’t the uber-posh Lumley, scion of the British Raj, a discordant choice for this long-running saga of Mancunian folk? But of course Lumley herself appeared in Corrie, in a brief run as “the enigmatic Elaine Perkins” in the summer of 1973.Elaine was a fleeting love interest for Ken Barlow, who would become far better known for his violently combustible marriage to Anne Kirkbride’s Read more ...
David Nice
How strange to experience Saffron Walden’s amazingly high-standard new(ish) concert hall without the usual auditorium – in other words no tiered rows other than in the balcony, but seats around tables, on a level with the musicians (pictured below, the scene before the performance). And what a world-class concert this was, not the sort of thing you’d usually expect at the end of a misty afternoon’s ramble in the Essex countryside.It was a topsy-turvy programme, to be sure, with meditations bright (Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll) and dark (Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder) followed by an anything but tea- Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A 35-year-old gay man has to figure out which way to turn in GHBoy, the Paul Harvard play whose connection to the chemsex world is embedded in its title. Will Robert (Jimmy Essex) settle into a relationship with Catalan university student Sergi (Marc Bosch) 15 years his junior, or will he succumb to the frequently unclad presence of Sylvester Akinrolabu, who plays the various tempters he meets along the way? What about the undertow of danger that has seen numerous men in Robert's stimulant-ready East London midst murdered of late? The grim spectre of serial killer Stephen Port has been Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This was the first song recital back at the Wigmore Hall following the second lockdown with a (distanced, 25%) audience. And it was a joy to be back. Great singing. That superb acoustic. A completely rapt audience. And, miraculously, not a single cough.Fatma Said and Joseph Middleton’s 75-minute recital consisted of a very cleverly-constructed two-part programme: the first half with songs about flowers starting with Mozart and progressing to Schubert, the second about dreams, from Schubert to Weill with an encore from Jerome Kern, all sung completely from memory.Said has a lively stage Read more ...
India Lewis
Don DeLillo’s latest novella, The Silence, has been marketed with an emphasis on its prescience, describing the shocked lacuna of time around a devastating event whose repercussions are yet to be truly felt. It is a compelling short read, but a little bit too pretentious to be read without a certain amount of cynicism (particularly when the characters reel off long, declamatory statements about cryptocurrency).The Silence has echoes of other texts, with two in particular that stand out. The first was DeLillo’s own 1997 behemoth Underworld, with significant ball games being played in both. The Read more ...
David Nice
Anyone who expects traditional narrative in Steve McQueen’s five Small Axe films about the black experience in the London of the 1970s and 80s will be disappointed. It seems to me that the most experimental of the four so far screened, Lovers Rock, holds us in a unique world between dream and reality, a masterpiece, but it’s had the most stick so far. The others have specific true stories to tell, and they do it surprisingly. Red, White and Blue explored only the early days of Leroy Logan, before the point when his war on racism in the police force could make a difference; now Alex Wheatle Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Podcasts have got many of us through 2020, starved as we have been for most of it of live comedy to leave the house to see. Here's a selection of some of the best; they are available on all podcast platforms unless stated.Dear Joan & JerichaAfter the spoof agony aunts recently went public with their first in-person appearance (pictured above), they spoil us with a third series of the award-winning podcast. Julia Davis (who plays Joan) and Vicki Pepperdine (Jericha) riff on all matters to do with sex and relationships, so prepare to have your eyes popped with their outrageously graphic Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Scars’s tour de force album Author! Author! has been out of sight for too long. Originally released in 1981, it first reappeared on a swiftly withdrawn CD in 2007. Apparently, there were issues about where the rights for its reissue lay. Now, it has re-emerged.Author! Author! was great. On the surface it was poppy, but a darkness coursed through its ten tracks. “All About You”, the March 1981 single trailing its release, sounds like a hit (its promo video is on YouTube). Driving, melodic and mysterious, it suggested Scars as an artier, more subtle counterpart to the U2 of “I Will Follow”. It Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
One of Marc Chagall’s last commissions was for a stained-glass window in Chichester Cathedral, which channelled his characteristically exuberant spirituality into a response to the verse from Psalm 150, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord”. One of my earliest cultural memories is going as a schoolgirl to attend the window’s unveiling and seeing for the first time the clashing colours and fusing of folk and experimental art that made him one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive artists.Emma Rice’s ravishing, colour-saturated production of The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk takes Read more ...