Reviews
David Nice
The Fidelio Orchestra Café is where you go for electric-shock and deep immersion therapy from the greatest of musicians. It happened last week with Steven Isserlis in Bach, and last night Alina Ibragimova sent high voltage shooting through the body with the very first gesture of Janáček’s Violin Sonata, joined in supernatural high wire acts by Samson Tsoy on the Bechstein now filling more than the space occupied last week only by the cellist. The two advertised sonatas are febrile masterpieces, but we hadn’t bargained for the deep-meditation extras by Arvo Pärt and Olivier Messiaen, the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As an opening line to BBC Two's new three-part series, “Rupert Murdoch is an enigma” failed to set pulses racing. It rather implied that after three hours of documentary TV, we may end up none the wiser about what makes the scary Australian media tycoon tick.Still, director Jamie Roberts and his team had done their due diligence in the research department, turning up a trove of nuggets from the archives interspersed with pithy interviews from assorted players in Murdoch’s extraordinary journey, including Alan Sugar, Hugh Grant, Piers Morgan and Andrew Neil. There were some chilling Read more ...
India Lewis
Characterised by jarring juxtapositions of intense, appalling violence and the serene beauty of South Africa, Oliver Hermanus’ fourth feature is the story of a young man coming to terms with his sexuality against the background of apartheid and prejudice.It's set in 1981, over a decade before homosexuality was legalised in South Africa, when any expression of same-sex attraction in the military meant a trip to Ward 22, where Dr Aubrey Levin subjected his patients to inhumane "treatments". The threat of this punishment hangs over the protagonist, Nick van der Swart (Kai Luke Brummer), its Read more ...
David Nice
No happy family, surely, was ever quite like this one. Love and mutual respect bound up with music-making at the highest level make the Kanneh-Masons of Nottingham a role-model for this country in times of trouble, with their reiterated message that music is for everyone, something to be shared at every level. Tellingly, it isn’t “Sheku and his siblings” – that's been done brilliantly in a previous documentary – but a whole roster of successful and potentially successful performers among whom it happens to be the cellist who’s made it big. And it doesn’t look as if his modesty and intense Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Hot on the heels of The Car Park Club and @TheDriveIn comes Car Park Party, a series of shows presented in partnership with The Comedy Store. Car Park Party presents an evening of four comics doing short sets, presented by an MC.The performance I saw in the beautiful surroundings of Henley Royal Regatta, where the cancelled Henley Festival would normally be held, was hosted by Stephen Grant, who jollied things along nicely and created as much audience participation as is possible at a drive-in – much helped here by the good weather, picnicking guests and the large proportion of the audience Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s been a long strange trip for Dennis Herrold. The Virginia-born rocker’s sole single, December 1957’s “Hip Hip Baby” / “Make With the Lovin’”, was a full-bore rockabilly two-sider. Yet it made no waves despite being reviewed glowingly by music biz journal Billboard. “Hip Hip Baby” was “a la Presley on a fast moving rockabilly tune,” while “Make With the Lovin’” “packs plenty of sales savvy into another infectious rockabilly song.” The single sold barely any copies. Nonetheless, over sixty years on Herrold is a rockabilly phenomenon.The 10-inch album The Mystery Of Dennis Herrold includes Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The cakes look great, but it's back to the recipe books in almost every other way for Love Sarah, a subpar film from director Eliza Schroeder about the struggles of a west London patisserie in the age of Brexit. The emergence of Schroeder's feature filmmaking debut just now may benefit from a citizenry eager to get back out to their local baker. Alas, all the best will in the world can't override the gathering irritation of a story that often feels like a peculiar amalgam of Fleabag and Notting Hill, albeit without the necessary eccentricity or charm of either. It's giving Read more ...
David Nice
So, arts people, you’ve had precisely two days to get your outdoor events ready, so where are they? Well, it seems that Glyndebourne had advance notice and will be holding its garden concerts soon, though they sold out almost immediately. Opera Holland Park will be doing something later this month; these and others are adaptable and inventive, given half a chance.Meanwhile, onscreen you can feast on the gorgeous nature, cultivated and otherwise, at Garsington between Pavilion performances and enjoy Sheku Kanneh-Mason alongside Philharmonia players in the striking surroundings of the recently- Read more ...
Owen Richards
Scooby fans have waited over 50 years for a proper big screen adaptation of everyone’s favourite cowardly dog (sorry Cartoon Network’s Courage). The 2003 live-action version starring Matthew Lillard and Sarah Michelle Gellar failed to capture the paranormal-busting mystery of the TV series, and although the follow-up Monsters Unleashed recreated the classic villains, it was still a slog. But with a new CGI adventure from the studio behind The Lego Movie and the underrated Smallfoot, could Scoob! finally be the film Mystery Inc. deserve?Well, the plot certainly tries to squeeze in as many Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lockdown’s easing and the record shops are opening here and there. So, to help vinyl junkies on their way, here’s 7000 words of reviews, capturing the best of the last couple of months’ releases on plastic. As ever, the sounds go everywhere, from hip hop to post-punk to Moroccan trance music. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Four Owls Nocturnal Instinct (High Focus) + TrueMendous Huh? (High Focus) + Telemachus Boring & Weird Historical Music (High Focus)Three albums from Brighton’s High Focus Records which showcase many kinds of verve and ambition. The label is best known for nurturing the Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Gavin O’Connor has made a career out of sturdy films that make grown men cry. His best was Warrior - a hulking, tear-jerking tale of male fragility and addiction. His latest Finding The Way Back is a potent, raw drama that explores similar terrain and reunites him with Ben Affleck (they last worked together on The Accountant).This film was initially called The Has-Been. Like a stage-actor hearing the word "Macbeth", the average Hollywood actor might recoil at such a title. Which is a shame, as it encapsulates the sense of loss experienced by the central character Read more ...
Florence Hallett
When Picasso left Barcelona for Paris in 1900, he took what by then was a well-trodden path for artists eager to be at the very centre of the art world. Trained in the academies of Barcelona, their ambitions nurtured in the bohemian environment of Els Quatre Gats - the city’s answer to the Parisian artists’ haunt Le Chat Noir – several generations of Spanish artists born in the 19th century went to the City of Light in search of the newest ideas and styles, and a market for their work.Picasso remained in Paris for much of his life, but many of his fellow countrymen returned to Spain, their Read more ...