Reviews
Jessica Duchen
A clever programme, a vivid premiere, a Proms debut for an exciting young conductor and the first appearance there by Catriona Morison since she won the 2017 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World: all this provided grist to the mill for a sold-out Prom that was more than the sum of its impressive parts. Elim Chan, who won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition (the first woman to do so) in 2014, was on the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s podium for pieces themed around the sea and pictures. The 33-year-old conductor from Hong Kong is a tiny, pleasingly charismatic figure – offering ideas Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Alun Cochrane Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Alun Cochrane is going to treat us like adults, he says by way of introduction, by giving us his take on lots of things in modern society that we may or may not agree with. He’s no controversialist, but he doesn’t automatically follow in the wake of woke-bloke comics on the circuit. Actually his views are well informed and well within the limits of reasonableness – but, just as he predicted, there were one or two that drew groans or an intake of breath from the audience. But when they are expressed with a large dose of Yorkshire charm and Read more ...
Tim Cumming
It’s been a period of upheaval and change for singer-songwriter, and compelling interpreter of traditional ballads, Josienne Clarke. These days she’s a Rough Trade artist, now sailing solo seas away from her long-time musical partner, producer and arranger Ben Walker. Together between 2010 and last year, they released two digital albums, Our Light is Gone and The Seas are Deep, three EPs and four exquisite CD/vinyl releases in 2013’s Fire & Fortune, the following year’s Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour, 2016’s Overnight and the final Seedlings All last year, the latter the first to be Read more ...
David Kettle
Urgent, fast-paced, seemingly never pausing for breath, How Not to Drown is a real-life boy’s own adventure, an appeal for compassion towards refugees, and an interrogation of nationality and identity. That’s quite a mix for a show of 100 minutes. But this bold, confident work, directed with somewhat breathless energy by Neil Bettles for theatre company ThickSkin, pulls it off brilliantly, on a revolving raised platform in Becky Minto’s rugged set. And it’s all the more remarkable because it’s true.Dritan Kastrati grew up in Kosovo, but his parents became increasingly alarmed as war grew ever Read more ...
David Kettle
If nothing else, Arabella Weir quips, she can thank her mother for providing the material for her first Fringe show. For Does My Mum Loom Big In This? (see what she did there) is the Fast Show and Two Doors Down actor/comedian’s reflections on motherhood, both her own to her two now twentysomething kids, but more importantly, that of her own mother – posh Scottish, Weir tells us, Oxford-educated, and permanently dissatisfied by the appearance, intellect and achievements of her disappointment of a daughter.So we duly discover the eccentricities of Weir Snr’s behaviour, from moaning about being Read more ...
David Nice
Berlioz's most intimate oratorio certainly isn't just for Christmas – but, given its scale, is it right for the Proms? Certainly in anniversary year we'd hoped for something bigger: the Requiem, turned to mush earlier this year in St Paul's Cathedral, could have been made for the Albert Hall, with brass bands placed at the four points of the compass. But this venue can do strangely moving things with the small scale, given caring interpreters, and that was equally true of the four late-night Bach cantatas from the eight voices and small ensemble of Solomon's Knot.What choirs and players we Read more ...
Marianka Swain
As British summer really kicks in (umbrellas at the ready), our thoughts might turn fondly to the sunny Caribbean. Good timing, then, for the return of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s 1990 musical set in the French Antilles. Based on Rosa Guy’s novel, it tells a familiar tale of boundary-crossing lovers – The Little Mermaid meets Romeo and Juliet – though with some location-specific details that give it fresh interest.One stormy night, villagers distract a crying child with the story of Ti Moune (Chrissie Bhima, pictured below with Martin Cush), a dark-skinned peasant girl who falls Read more ...
Owen Richards
What’s the next level above national treasure? We’ll need a name for it by the end of All Woman, Kathy Burke’s new Channel 4 documentary. With a big heart and a foul mouth, she’s travelled the country trying to define 21st century womanhood – an incredibly tall order for three hour-long shows, but episode one proved she’s more than up for the task.The first concept under Burke’s watchful eye was beauty, and where better to start than former Love Island contestant Megan Barton-Hanson? The two shared a sympathetic conversation about the pressures young girls face to conform to beauty standards Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Based on Savannah Knoop’s memoir Girl Boy Girl: How I became JT LeRoy, Justin Kelly’s film skims the surface of the sensational literary hoax of the early 2000s, that far-off time before avatars, gender fluidity and fake online identity were part of everyday life.Kristen Stewart, with her own queer identity as a background hum, is a fine, understated match for the role of the androgynous Knoop, who was roped in by her sister-in-law, 40-year-old author Laura Albert (a harsh, one-note Laura Dern) to play LeRoy at literary events and parties. This is Knoop's side of the story, set in San Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Catherine Bohart Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Catherine Bohart has a most unusual starting point for her new show, Lemon. Last year at the Fringe, a woman was so appalled by the Irishwoman mentioning her sexuality – she’s bisexual – in her show Immaculate that she pronounced herself “disgusted” by its sexual content.Except that there wasn’t anything other than a brief mention of Bohart’s girlfriend. We should thank the woman in the yellow jumper – not for her homophobia, obviously, or her lack of attention – but because it allows Bohart to riff amusingly on so many things that follow from Read more ...
David Kettle
It’s the end of the world as we know it. At least according to Miles, scientist turned messiah, who lost his son in an accident at a frozen lake, and who experienced visions of an impending apocalypse in his subsequent coma.He’s established a colony of believers (let’s not call it a cult) in South America, and we’re here to bear witness to the arrival of his estranged wife, intent on reclaiming their daughter back to civilisation.And it must be so, for it is written in the book, copies of which await us like hymnals when we take our places in the seating circle. The book contains exquisite Read more ...
Owen Richards
Life on the Welsh coast isn’t getting any easier: defendant Madlen was found guilty of murder, husband Evan was coming home from prison, and Faith had just given Steve Baldini a rather uncomfortable snog on the beach. She’s probably pining for that first series now, at least the hubby was out of the picture.In the latest episode of BBC's watercooler hit, Faith’s become entangled in a murder enquiry of her own. After running errands for local baddie Gael Reardon, one of her contacts has turned up on a morgue slab. The victim had called Faith just before his death, so it won’t be long until the Read more ...