Reviews
Joseph Walsh
Canadian-Iranian director Sadaf Foroughi offers up a gut-wrenching tale of adolescent rebellion set against the strictures of an oppressive Middle Eastern society. It rivals the work of Asghar Farhadi in quality, telling the story of a 17-year-old student whose strong-willed ways lead her into conflict with her watchful parents and teachers. To Western eyes, Ava’s (Mahour Jabbari) acts of adolescent rebellion seem slight – wanting to study music wouldn’t often be met with disapproval by parents. At school she chats innocently with her best friend Melody (Shayesteh Sajadi), talking Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Birmingham emerged from musical lockdown with Stockhausen. It couldn’t have been anyone else, really. There’s something about Stockhausen’s fusion of modernity and goofy intergalactic romanticism that clearly strikes a chord in the Second City, where the last three decades of music have been measured out in landmark Stockhausen performances: Rattle’s CBSO performances of Gruppen, Birmingham Opera Company’s astonishing 2012 world premiere of Mittwoch aus Licht, and, in 1992, a massive open-air performance of Sternklang in Cannon Hill Park, under the direction of Stockhausen himself.In Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
The debate about whether violent films cause violent acts has been around for decades. From Mary Whitehouse’s puritanical crusade against films such as The Exorcist, to recent movies like Joker, pundits, columnists and even psychiatrists have wrangled over whether what we watch adversely influences our behaviour. And it’s often the horror genre that takes the brunt of the debate. Now actor-turned-director/screenwriter, Jay Baruchel wades in with his highly stylised slasher that seeks to unpick this complex problem. You might not expect the man who voiced Hiccup in the How Read more ...
David Nice
If it all comes across as vividly as this on screen, imagine what it would have been like to witness in person. Which quite a few of us very nearly did, until we had to be disinvited owing to changed government guidelines. Hopefully the move back to reopening of concert halls will admit us in limited numbers to the Wigmore Hall in September, and what a feast it is from this pioneering set-up: 100 events planned up to 22 December, all to be livestreamed (the qualification being that they really ought to charge a small amount for viewing; everything for free makes it hard on smaller outfits Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“Manctopia” sounds like a blissed-out buzzword from the golden years of New Order and Happy Mondays, but in this four-part series (BBC Two) it’s used to describe the explosive redevelopment of Manchester. One of the fastest growing cities in Europe, it has been experiencing a sci-fi-like eruption of skyscrapers and upscale residential properties, and with London prices at astronomical levels, Manchester has been delighting property investors with its lucrative returns. Salford's burgeoning MediaCityUK, now the second home of the BBC, has been a further signifier of the city’s rising prestige. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The usual summer vinyl release slump doesn’t seem to apply this year. During the COVID-19 crisis, the demand for vinyl has risen rather than fallen and theartsdesk on Vinyl reflects that again this month with another monster round-up of reviews, covering everything from extreme metal to country’n’western to contemporary jazz.VINYL OF THE MONTHVarious Come Stay With Me (Come Play With Me)August 2020’s Vinyl of the Month is an Arts Council-backed compilation on bright red vinyl from Leeds label Come Play With Me. It’s designed to help support the contributing artists from the area as they deal Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
The timing couldn’t be more perfect for a series like Lovecraft Country (Sky Atlantic) in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Here we have a spectacular show in which fantasy, horror and America’s racist legacy collide with remarkable results.Adapted from the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, it depicts the journey of a black family in Jim Crow-era America. Across 10 episodes, they must not only survive encounters with supernatural monsters straight from the work of the father of Cosmic Horror, HP Lovecraft, but also contend with real monsters, like racist cops in sundown towns, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A lot of rain and untold bliss: those were the takeaways from Saturday night’s alfresco Opera Holland Park concert performance of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s eternally glorious 1973 musical, A Little Night Music. I doubt any of the 200 or so people in attendance will soon forget that night's music, and not only because those who stayed the course are very likely still drying out from a belligerently sustained summer squall that mattered little set against the immediacy and necessity of art. Among the 90-year-old composer's most popular titles, and showcasing his best-known Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Warren is normally to be found in Brighton city centre, where it stages shows during the Brighton Fringe. But there's nothing normal about 2020, so its organisers are now producing The Warren Outdoor Season at a pop-up space on Brighton beach, in sight of the Pier and the Brighton Zip, and it's reassuringly Covid-secure.There's an obvious attention to detail: the well-spaced bench tables seat up to six and each has its own speaker, there's table service from the bar, plenty of loos and hand sanitisers, with a strictly (but politely) enforced one-way system in operation. And the Read more ...
David Nice
Before the not-quite-clear all-clear was given for distanced performances indoors, Bold Tendencies already had the perfect summer solution in the floor space beneath its rooftop terrace in Peckham’s former multi-storey car park. Never was its covering more needed than on Saturday night, when the perfect storms, apocalypses and incantations of pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy in Messiaen’s gobsmacking Visions de l’Amen gradually magicked away the torrential rain beyond and the city skyline slowly came into focus again.Nothing in all this, for me, quite matches the God-in-everything Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
I have a confession to make: I don’t like Alice in Wonderland. I know, I know, a lot of people disagree. I do appreciate its place in the cultural pantheon – I just find all the caterpillars and tea parties and pointless riddles really, really dull. So it’s hard to be sure if it was the subject matter of Alice, A Virtual Theme Park that left me a little chilly, or its form. Creation Theatre’s Zoom adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s stories is over-ambitious at times, but it works well when it’s reminding us of life’s fundamental absurdity – and how leaning into that can bring us together Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s somewhat dispiriting to watch a coming-of-age rom-com that rarely rises above clichés and limps along as slowly as Yes, God, Yes. It's set in the early 2000s, and 16-year old Alice (Natalie Dyer) is struggling with sexual desire, idling on saucy chat rooms on her parents’ basement computer and guiltily enjoying how good her phone feels when set to vibrate in her lap. After malicious gossips spread a story around Alice's strict Catholic high school that she has "tossed the salad" of another girl’s boyfriend, she’s sent to an intensive retreat run by the school priest. Father Murphy ( Read more ...