Reviews
Matt Wolf
Time has been not just kind but even crucial to Little Baby Jesus, the 2011 play from the multi-hyphenate talent Arinzé Kene, who since then has gone on become a major name on and offstage: the West End transfer of his self-penned Misty brought him dual Olivier nominations earlier this year as writer and actor, and he segued from that to playing the volatile son Biff in Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic.All of which means that catching this play at this point in Kene’s career is to witness an embryonic creative chomping rabidly and electrically at the bit Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Every ten years or so Thomas Adès writes a piano concerto and the latest had its UK premiere last night at the Royal Festival Hall, played by Kirill Gerstein and conducted by Adès himself. Following on from the youthful, skittish Concerto Conciso of 1998, and the lush, layered In Seven Days of 2008, the new piece, baldly called just Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, sees Adès engaging with the giants of 20th century piano concerto, fashioning something that simultaneously looks backwards and forwards.The concerto has lots of Adès trademarks: rhythmic complexity in the form of polyrhythms and Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Sentient machines have taken over the Earth. The leader of the human rebellion is so effective that a robotic ‘terminator’ is sent back in time to ensure he’s never born. A guardian follows, to ensure he is. We’ve been here before. Even in the unadventurous, market-driven world of sequels, it’s remarkable just how stuck theTerminator films have been in their template, with the same basic premise, the same character dynamics, the same action sequences predicated on the relentlessness of the robot assassins, the same bewildering timeline. However, not all of them have had Sarah Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Police corruption has fuelled many a Hollywood thriller, but sadly Black and Blue is no Training Day or The Departed. Naomie Harris plays US Army veteran turned rookie cop Alicia West, just three weeks into a career with the New Orleans police department, who to her horror stumbles across a murderous conspiracy among her fellow officers. The plot is basically her race against the odds to expose the bad guys before they bump her off.Harris’s character is difficult to take seriously, since despite her apparently gruelling military experiences in Kandahar, she’s astonishingly naive about life on Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Oslo Philharmonic finished its centenary tour of Europe at the Barbican last night with ample proof that it consistently delivers one of the continent’s most well-rounded, and richly satisfying, orchestral sounds. The Norwegians’ modern history may date to 1919, but their stellar reputation only emerged in the 1980s. Then Mariss Jansons, just like Simon Rattle over in Birmingham, shaped a supposedly “provincial” outfit into a regiment of world-beaters. Today, as Vasily Petrenko’s tenure as chief conductor nears its end, his players cultivate sophisticated soundscapes which join Read more ...
Concerto/Enigma Variations/Raymonda Act III, Royal Ballet review - time to cheer the corps de ballet
Jenny Gilbert
As a mood-lifter, it’s hard to beat the opening of Concerto. Against a primrose sky, figures in daffodil, tangerine and brick form lozenges of fizzing colour, foregrounded by a leading couple so buoyant their heels barely ever touch down. Kenneth MacMillan’s response to Shostakovich’s sunny Second Piano Concerto makes a brilliant start to the first mixed bill of the new Royal Ballet season, a bill that unites three productions first seen at Covent Garden in the mid-1960s, although from their wildly contrasting styles you would never guess.In its outer movements Concerto gives the whole Read more ...
David Nice
There are now two septuagenarians playing Schubert at a level no other living pianist can touch. Imogen Cooper celebrated her 70th birthday on 28 August, and marked it at the Wigmore Hall last night with a two-interval epic, poised but full of inner fire and deepest pathos, not long after 74-year-old Elisabeth Leonskaja had touched the heavens playing Beethoven's last three sonatas in a late-night concert and joined with Liza Ferschtman and István Várdai in Schubert's two late piano trios.Leonskaja has also programmed the Schubert triptych of the composer's last year in a single concert, and Read more ...
Ellie Porter
There’s no getting around it – it’s very surreal indeed to be in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and see an eye-wateringly famous movie and TV star rocking out on stage. But it’s a testament to Kiefer Sutherland’s commitment to his musical side-project that this never overwhelms what turns out to be an entertaining, enjoyable evening of bluesy, rootsy country shenanigans.Tonight’s gig rounds off the latest leg of this tour, which was recently disrupted due to a Sutherland vs tourbus steps mishap that saw the singer, actor (and, as we learn, former professional rodeo cowboy) forced to postpone a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This terrifying but gripping BBC Four series about Northern Ireland’s savage sectarian war reached its conclusion with a meticulously detailed account of how hostilities were eventually brought to a close by the Good Friday Agreement, which came into effect in December 1999. In the end, it resulted from a combination of politics, compromise and a realisation that the interminable violence was an obstacle to change rather than a way to achieve itAmerican senator George Mitchell, who chaired the all-party peace negotiations, declared: “This agreement proves that democracy works. We can say to Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Even the mighty Almeida is allowed the occasional dud and it’s sure as hell got one at the moment with Vassa. Maxim Gorky’s 1910 play (rewritten in 1935) about a matriarch in extremis some years back proved a stonking West End star vehicle for Sheila Hancock. It offers a chance to go hell-for-leather that should set the pulse racing. That same role was to have been played this time out by Samantha Bond, who bowed out and has been replaced by a game if not ideally cast Siobhan Redmond: her breathy exhalations tire after a while, and one misses the whiplash authority required of a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
What’s the most ridiculous programme that Channel 4 has ever made? Sex Box? The Execution of Gary Glitter? Extreme Celebrity Detox? Whatever, The British Tribe Next Door is up there vying for supremacy.The Moffatt family, from Bishop Auckland, have travelled to Otjeme in Western Namibia for a month, to live alongside the semi-nomadic Himba tribe. This is because Scarlett “Gogglebox” Moffatt – daughter of Mark and Betty and sister of Ava-Grace – is about 12 percent of a celebrity. They won’t be living in the Himba’s distinctive huts, but instead in a perfect replica of their own two-storey Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Playing our monarch and her husband in The Crown has made actors Claire Foy and Matt Smith into TV drama royalty, so reuniting the pair onstage guarantees a hot ticket. What’s less clear is why Lungs, Duncan Macmillan’s rather thin 2011 play, merits a major revival at the Old Vic. A two-hander charting the evolution of a couple’s relationship as they grapple with the prospect of parenthood and the future of the planet, it recycles well-worn themes, and its tone and viewpoint are as middle-class, conventional and, frankly, about as dramatically exciting as a weekly shop in Waitrose.There’s a Read more ...