Reviews
Saskia Baron
Forty years after Alien made a star out of Sigourney Weaver, comes a documentary that goes into forensic detail about the movie’s original writer and monstrous imagery but barely mentions its lead actor despite the fact that her portrayal of Ripley broke all the stereotypes of women in sci-fi. The omission is a little baffling, but for superfans of Alien, the kind who pore over its different iterations (it’s probably the only film that runs shorter in its director’s cut) and delight in spotting every visual reference, there are plenty of pleasures to be had in Memory: the Origins of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
We're saying goodbye to a much treasured friend. Fleabag will live on, of course – other actresses have and will inhabit the role – but Phoebe Waller-Bridge, its creator, has said this short run at Wyndham's Theatre is the last time she will perform the character on stage.And so that knowledge makes this deliciously filthy and witty monologue – about a twentysomething woman who attracts trouble – even more enjoyable. It was first staged at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013 and Waller-Bridge later performed it at Soho Theatre in London and, more recently, SoHo Playhouse in New York, gaining a Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Joanna Hogg’s melancholy autobiographical drama The Souvenir cuts too close to the bone. That’s a compliment: like Sally Rooney’s equally unsettling first novel Conversations With Friends, Hogg’s movie almost forces the viewer to relive that shattering early romance, founded on collusion and self-delusion, that reordered her or his universe for all time.Like Conversations With Friends, too, The Souvenir, set in the first half of the 1980s, depicts a young woman’s affair with a withholding older man. Whereas Rooney’s protagonist Frances is a poor Dublin undergraduate enmeshed with a married Read more ...
Katherine Waters
“Thank you for making us so fucking special!” It’s the end the set and both adjectives are appropriate. “Yes I had to say fucking special,” Peaches yells, combative and loved. The audience howls back. The Royal Festival Hall is hardly a natural environment for anarchic art-punk scuzz but Peaches knows how to work her crowd. She’s played here before and saw Grace Jones perform live, after all.When she crashed into the mainstream with The Teaches of Peaches, she was already a few records off obscurity. Years on and she’s still offering up obscenity, snark and attitude with abandon. Up Read more ...
Nick Hasted
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) wouldn’t have any luck at all. Being an Iraq special forces veteran jailed for protecting his wife in a bar fight seems wretched karma enough. Released as an undercover informant on the Polish mob for FBI handler Wilcox (Rosamund Pike), his bid to secure real freedom with his family is then kiboshed when a similarly clandestine New York cop is killed by his gangster partner.In return for such unwanted heat, both Polish kingpin the General (Eugene Lipinski) and Wilcox insist that Koslow re-enter his brutally corrupt alma mater, Bale Hill Read more ...
David Nice
Can we go back to an older Glyndebourne-at-the-Proms vintage, where the chosen production was merely sketched out with variations suited to the venue, and performed in whatever evening dress might be appropriate? Certainly one wishes that director-designer duo André Barbe and Renaud Doucet’s ingenious wardrobe for their reductive Edwardian-hotel, chefs-and-chambermaids Magic Flute could have been left down in Sussex. This would have given the serious stretches of the piece the simple gravity and musical focus Mozart deserves when he goes deep.Unfortunately this was also an exposure of what Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Neil Armfield’s resonant, turbulent production of Kate Grenville’s classic Australian novel The Secret River sing out from the stage of the Olivier like an epic, with its conflicts, culture clashes, and quest for new territories. But there are no heroes in this tale of sound and fury, which details a tragedy of mutual incomprehension as an eighteenth-century petty London criminal fights to assert dominance over the Aboriginals of New South Wales.The play – which has been adapted by Andrew Bovell – gained an ardent following when it opened in Australia in 2013. This year its triumphant Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Is there any challenge that television producers haven't filmed celebrities doing? They won't be happy until they've followed a bunch of them snowboarding down an Alp while baking a cake, conducting an orchestra and researching their family history. And if it involves a little sob followed by a group hug, bonus!But I can't be cynical about Sink or Swim (Channel 4) because it's in aid of the charity Strand Up to Cancer. The programme's USP is that 11 celebrities – using the term loosely – who are all weak or non-swimmers are being trained to do a sponsored relay swim across the Channel next Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Done well, a one-room exhibition can be the very best sort, a small selection of paintings allowing the focused exploration of a single topic without the diluting effect of multiple rooms and objects. In this respect, Artists in Amsterdam rather misses its mark, providing neither the detail nor the scholarly insight we have come to expect from the National Gallery’s Room One exhibitions.Even so, Dulwich Picture Gallery’s display is not without its merits, and it uses eight works from its extensive collection of Dutch paintings, plus one loan, to sketch an evocative, if slight impression of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There was a time when a new series of The Affair (Sky Atlantic) would cause the heart to quicken; now, not so much. Actually that sounds like the course of most extramarital affairs – an initial rush to spend time with the object of your affection, only for the desire to dwindle over time. Yet the opening episode (of 11) of the fifth and final series promised that this would be an interesting hook-up as there's an intriguing new thread with the introduction of the adult version of a character we last saw as a child in a previous series.In the opening episode things were in a state of flux in Read more ...
Owen Richards
As days get shorter and the sun tucks itself behind a blanket of clouds, Whitney return with the bittersweet sound of summer ending. Forever Turned Around is the long-awaited follow up to 2016’s Light Upon the Lake, and the band have lost none of their melodic magic. It is old city soul brought to the hills and forests of the American frontier, and a much welcome break in these trying times.Opener and lead single “Giving Up” shows the band have opted for evolution over revolution. Those trademark falsetto vocals are still there, the horn-led breakdown and uplifting chorus are very on brand. Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There’s something truly sad and dispiriting about listening to an artist trash their back catalogue and absolutely totally ruin their greatest song, especially when that song has acquired anthemic status and been chosen to be preserved by the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry. Bob Dylan does it, of course, but that’s intentional. Martha Reeves clearly doesn’t realise how terrible she sounds and no one has had the courage to tell her. What are sisters for?Her younger sisters Lois and Delphine, who currently comprise The Vandellas, perhaps have too much of a vested interest Read more ...