Reviews
Bernard Hughes
Some of the greatest pieces of the string orchestra repertoire are based on pre-existing pieces: the fantasias by Tippett and Vaughan Williams, on Corelli and Tallis respectively, treat their starting material with invention and sweep, creating something new, bigger and better than their sources. But throughout Lera Auerbach’s Dialogues on Stabat Mater (after Pergolesi) last night I felt nothing other than the desire to hear the Pergolesi original, unadorned and unmeddled-with. The shallowness of Auerbach’s work was only thrown into greater relief by the masterpiece that followed it: Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Well here’s an interesting one. We’ve been up to our eyebrows in Eurocops for the past few years, but this Anglo-Japanese fusion from BBC Two (the title translates as "Duty / Shame") feels strikingly fresh and different.It began, as policiers are inclined to do, with an untimely death. We saw a smartly-dressed Japanese man in a ferociously modern London apartment, pouring out a couple of whiskies. Somebody called on the entryphone. In the flash of an edit, he was a corpse on the carpet with a sword buried in his back, surrounded by CSIs in masks and white overalls, dusting for clues. Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Clean Break, the theatre company that specialises in working with women in the criminal justice system, is doing a lot of celebrating. It's the 40th anniversary of this unique female organisation and already this year they have put on a variety of shows, from Chloe Moss's Sweatbox to the devised piece Inside Bitch. Now they are teaming up with Alice Birch, one of British theatre's most experimental writers, to produce [Blank] at the Donmar Warehouse, which likewise is reinventing itself as a cutting-edge venue. The theme, predictably enough, is the impact of criminal justice on women and Read more ...
Graham Fuller
It isn’t provable whether adultery is more accepted in French bourgeois life than in that of other countries, but French films often suggest it’s nothing to get in a lather about. Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction, in which three of the four main fortysomething characters are having affairs, presents infidelity as rote behavior more calmly than would most British or American films, puritanism being not fully extinguished. Assayas doesn’t avoid raising the moral standard – he just doesn’t let it flap excessively.The film isn’t focused on adultery, however, but on the issue of digitisation's Read more ...
Robert Beale
Changes from the artists originally advertised can bring some happy discoveries. Sir Mark Elder, though present in the audience to hear last night’s Hallé performance at the Bridgewater Hall, was still recovering from surgery and so did not conduct it, as he’d planned to when the season was announced. Instead, the Hallé Youth Orchestra’s music director (and noted choral director) Ellie Slorach took the baton for the first work in the programme – Weinberg’s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes. This is Weinberg’s centenary year, so relative rareties such as this pleasant concoction of folk themes are Read more ...
Tom Baily
Another unnecessary sequel: we’re used to this sort of thing. The film knows it, too, as lead dork Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) meekly thanks the audience during the opening credits: “There are lots of options when it comes to zombie entertainment, so thank you for choosing us”. It’s a nice line, but feels like an apology for the film industry. “Bad films are everywhere, but this is the least bad”, he could have said. Fair enough. There are too many standard horror flicks, so shift the game (or try to).Zombie genre parodies have been on the rise (see also this year’s The Dead Don’t Die) since Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Early in the political drama Official Secrets, Keira Knightley’s real-life whistleblower Katharine Gun watches Tony Blair on television, giving his now infamous justification for the impending Iraq War, namely the existence of weapons of mass destruction. “He keeps repeating the lie,” she cries. “Just because you’re the Prime Minister doesn’t mean you get to make up your own facts.”There’s simply no escaping the resonance. The current occupant of No 10 isn’t the first to be economical with the truth; the real shock is that we keep on putting up with it. And the power of the film resides Read more ...
Ellie Porter
Having exploded on to the scene like a cross between Queen and My Chemical Romance, Derby’s young glam-rock upstarts the Struts are on top of the world. They've cracked America, supported the Rolling Stones, the Who, Mötley Crüe, Foo Fighters and Guns N’Roses and delighted a home crowd at 2018's Download festival, and are currently thrilling audiences on their own ludicrously entertaining headline tour.Tonight they hit London, and judging by the fevered crowd jammed into the Kentish Town Forum there’s a good night to come. The lights go down and the band saunter on, fully aware that it’s Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
It remains some of the most terrifying music ever written. Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony - the composer’s portrayal of the fear and anxiety felt under Stalin's regime - is a horrifyingly brutal musical portrayal of life lived under a totalitarian reign. The Moscow Philharmonic under the baton of Yuri Simonov gave a phenomenally accurate and moving performance of this work at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on Tuesday night.The intense claustrophobia of the work was at once expertly captured in the orchestra’s strong yet subdued sound. Simonov slyly upped the ante with a gradual increase in both Read more ...
Richard Hawley, Barrowland, Glasgow - black clad crooner's songs remain full of atmosphere and heart
Jonathan Geddes
When Richard Hawley arrived onstage, he had a confession to make. “I like to talk”, he declared, before adding “and play rock n’ roll”. Both were delivered in ample supply during the ensuing performance, the black clad quiff wearing troubadour a natural fit for one of Scotland’s most famed rock n’ roll locations.Yet if the Sheffield native’s persona of a somewhat bruised crooner can flourish in his songs, then his regular chatter tended towards the lighter side. Anecdotes regarding his manager being asked if he had Viagra outside the venue, declarations that he fancied a move to Scotland Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Dust off the record player: Idris Elba’s Eighties comedy In the Long Run (Sky 1) has returned for a second series. Loosely based on Elba’s childhood, the show brings us into the day-to-day life of a West African couple, their British-born son, and the community in their Leyton council estate.Tonight’s episode picked up right where the last series left us. Amidst rumours of job cuts, Walter Easmon (Elba) has stepped up as union representative for his colleagues at the factory. His brother Valentine (Jimmy Akingbola) has moved into a bachelor pad — the junk-filled flat above their local pub. Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s an uncomfortable feeling to find oneself completely at odds with an audience in a cinema, but it happens. The recent London Film Festival screening of The Peanut Butter Falcon came complete with the two lead actors and the co-directors and their film went down a storm with a crowd of happy viewers, many of whom had learning disabilities themselves. They were delighted to see Zack Gottsagen, an actor with Down’s Syndrome, play one of the three main characters. An independently-produced comedy-drama, it won the Audience Award at South by Southwest and has been a sleeper hit in the US. Read more ...