Reviews
Saskia Baron
As if penguins didn’t have enough to fret about with impending tariffs on exporting guano to America, here comes Steve Coogan to ruffle their feathers. The Penguin Lessons is a pretty loose adaptation of a memoir by Tom Michell, about his stint as a young English teacher in an ersatz British boarding school in Argentina.Casting middle-aged Coogan as Michell meant giving him a cursory backstory of a personal family tragedy to explain why his alternately louche and curmudgeonly character has sought employment abroad. Set against the backdrop of the 1976 military coup that led to the murders and Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and, more recently, Graham Norton’s bonhomie. Until you catch proper sight of the room’s walls that is, which are not, as you first thought, Duluxed in a bland magnolia shade, nor even panelled with upmarket modernist abstract paintings, befitting of the whiff of wealth that suffuses the space. It’s a man’s head, repeating and repeating and repeating, turned away, bull-necked, present but not present, intimidating from beyond the grave. I was in the stalls and I felt it! Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“I was born with the ability and the demon to write. I have been punished for it constantly.” Written and directed by Sinéad O’Shea, this fascinating documentary is a testimony to Edna O’Brien’s rebellious talent, her prolific output – a novel a year for a while – and her star-studded socialising. It includes archival footage, some of it against the backdrop of Irish politics, as well as final interviews in which she looks frail but still glamorous in a sequined indigo cardigan, recorded by O'Shea not long before O'Brien died last year, aged 93.The names of people she had affairs with, Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The name Arthur Bliss always summoned up for me the image of a fuddy-duddy old buffer writing boring music. But as I’ve discovered his work over the last few years – initially prompted by Paul Spicer’s excellent 2023 biography – I have realised this is not fair, and he’s actually a very interesting composer. This year’s 50th anniversary of his death has seen a push by the Bliss Trust to increase his visibility, with perhaps the most high-profile being the run-out for his Piano Concerto with the RPO at Cadogan Hall last night.The originally billed pianist Mark Bebbington – an established Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Or words to that effect. This quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost seems apt when thinking about the prevalence of mental health issues in current new writing for British stages. Perhaps this subject reflects the long shadow of the pandemic, or our greater sensitivity to such conditions.Either way, playwright and actor Naomi Denny’s new play, All the Happy Things, which was nominated for Soho Theatre’s Tony Craze Award in 2020, and now has a production in this venue’s studio space, speaks sincerely about death Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The London Choral Sinfonia are a very impressive group, a professional choir who are churning out terrific recordings at a breakneck pace – I reviewed their latest release of Malcolm Arnold on theartsdesk only last week – as well as a busy schedule of live concerts and educational outreach.At Smith Square Hall last night there was another aspect of their work on view, a commitment to new music in the form of a premiere of a large-scale new piece and, if I had my reservations about it, that commitment and ambition is still very much to be applauded.The first half of the programme was on more Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
It’s hard to think of anyone even half as persistent as William Forsythe in changing the conversation around ballet. The American choreographer first came to notice with what became the defining dancework of the late 1980s.In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated tugged ballet off-kilter and weaponised the pointe shoe to render it lean, mean and dangerous, especially when Sylvie Guillem was wearing it. From then on, Forsythe’s rule-breaking gathered pace until the stuff he was making for his own company looked dysmorphic, limbs wrenched into painful angles, music swapped for spoken text. Now 75, he’s Read more ...
Manic Street Preachers, Barrowland, Glasgow review - elder statesmen deliver melody and sing-a-longs
Jonathan Geddes
As you might expect from a Manic Street Preachers gig, literary influences were never far away. A DH Lawrence quote was prominently displayed on the video wall before the group took the stage, and band lyrics would randomly flash up throughout the ensuing performance. This occasionally raised an unintentional eyebrow, as when “Scream to a Sigh” was accompanied by I am a Relic lighting up – somewhat ironic for a group now so long-lasting they’re into a fourth decade.You could tell the longevity in other ways too, like the voices of nearby fans discussing prior gigs as if they were tours of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It had begun to seem that Jon Hamm, whatever other roles he might appear in, was destined to be forever remembered exclusively as Mad Men’s Don Draper. Character and actor had made such a perfect fit that it was impossible to prise them apart. I always liked the idea of Hamm as a retro-James Bond set in Ian Fleming’s original 1950s period, but they wouldn’t listen.So Hamm must be ecstatic with his new role as Andrew “Coop” Cooper in Your Friends & Neighbors, since it appears that lightning has struck twice. Cooper is a Manhattan hedge fund executive at a company called Bailey Russell. He’ Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Víkingur Ólafsson had something to prove at the Wigmore Hall. And prove it he did, even if, this time, his Goldberg Variations left a few features of Bach’s inexhaustible keyboard panorama at the edge of his pianistic picture. The much-loved Icelandic chart-topper had promised Beethoven’s final three sonatas for this concert. His last-minute reversion to the familiar Goldbergs – which he played on 88 occasions around the world last season after a supremely successful DG recording – had disappointed a portion of his vast fan-base. Besides, the prodigious newcomer Yunchan Lim had just performed Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The writer Amy Ng has made a sterling effort in digging up the true story behind her new play at the Kiln, Shanghai Dolls, but sadly has not yet found the best way to project this interesting material. The Dolls are two women who meet in Shanghai in 1935. China is riven by a civil war, the Japanese are encroaching on its territory and the Communist leader who will become one of the 20th century’s most iconic faces, Chairman Mao, is undertaking the Long March to save the Red Army from Nationalist forces. Newspaper headlines trumpet this, projected on the back wall. Meanwhile two women Read more ...
Mahler's Ninth, BBC Philharmonic, Gamzou, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - vision and intensity
Robert Beale
There was a change of conductor from the one advertised for this BBC Philharmonic performance at the Bridgewater Hall – but the one who we heard from was an interpreter of extraordinary vision and intensity. Yoel Gamzou is also a composer in his own right, and a Mahler specialist, it would seem: he’s made his own completion of the Tenth Symphony, so he’s no doubt as aware of the language and creative imagination of that other composer-conductor as anyone.Here it was the Ninth he brought to life, the only item on the programme in the event, as Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem was simply Read more ...