Reviews
Joseph Walsh
There's something unsatisfying about the fact that Asif Kapadia's new documentary on the controversial 1980s sporting legend Diego Maradona has a two-word title. It would have created a neat synchronicity with his previous two films (Amy and Senna), but we soon learn why this is the case.Kapadia's central thrust is the dichotomy of the public and private lives of a superstar, whose legend even the uninitiated are familiar with. The private figure is Diego – a sweet (self-described) mummy's boy from the slums of Argentina who rose through the sporting ranks to become the greatest football Read more ...
Saskia Baron
The best joke in Men in Black: International happens before the film starts, when the iconic Columbia Pictures lady in a toga whips out a pair of familiar dark glasses. It’s a nifty, witty gag that doesn’t outstay its welcome, which is more than can be said for the feature that follows. The original stars are absent and there’s an absence too of the screwball humour that made the first film, back in 1997 such a hit. Gone is Agent Tommy Lee Jones with his dry wit (or his simulacrum in Men in Black 3, Josh Brolin) and gone is Agent Will Smith with his gleeful energy. Instead we have two Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Forthright and often disturbing, Francis Bacon’s “male couplings” are also ambiguous, and it is this disjunction that gives them their power. Erotic, violent and yet so often tender, these 14 works from the 1950s to the 1970s restate Bacon's pre-eminence: surely no other artist has locked together sex and violence with such conviction. Bacon explores the relationship between two bodies, and specifically two male bodies – though gender is often left in doubt – with a frankness that feels like a physical blow. Vulnerability and intimacy are brought up short by brute strength: primal, Read more ...
Katie Colombus
In a post Ed Sheeran world, with a glut of acoustic singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi, Tom Walker or Odell, James Bay, Jack Savoretti – all of whom are big on poignantly penned balladry, phonic flair and harmonious melody – is there room for another young male artist to make waves in the indi-folk arena?Spotify seems to think so – 6 million streams and counting of singles from Charlie Cunningham’s recently released second album Permanent Way (and 165 million for his first album Lines in 2017) would indicate something special about his particular sonic concept.There’s certainly Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Terence Rattigan completists, and count myself among them, will leap at the chance to see a rare production courtesy the Orange Tree Theatre of While the Sun Shines, a 1943 monster hit for this great English writer that has languished in semi-obscurity ever since. (Theatre Royal, Bath, did an acclaimed version in 2016 but London hasn't seen it in an age.) Returning to a playwright whose previous French Without Tears enjoyed two sellout runs at this address, the director Paul Miller confirms a gift for mining the canon afresh.If one's actual experience of the play amounts to a rather more Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Kiss My Genders may not claim to be a survey, yet it seems perverse to mount an exhibition of work by LGBTQ artists who address issues of gender identity without including some of the best known names. Particular emphasis is placed, says the press release, on works that revisit the tradition of photographic portraiture; so why no sign of Claude Cahun, Gilbert and George, Urs Lüthi, Robert Mapplethorpe or Pierre et Giles – all pioneers in using photography to explore gay sexual identity ?They, or their representatives, may have declined to take part, of course – a decision that would have been Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“For I have found Demetrius like a jewel. Mine own, and not mine own.” Mine own and not mine own. This idea of transfiguration, of things familiar but somehow altered – is the spark that animates both Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Britten’s adaptation. Uncanny, Freud would have called it. There may be magic and naughty sprites, laughter and happy endings, but this is no fairy story. You only have to listen to those slithering glissandi in the cellos at the start of Britten’s opera to know that all is not wholesome in this particular garden.But the cruelty and violence of the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s a joke early on in Sweat, Lynn Nottage's superlative drama about American working lives, in which a lively bar-room conversation turns to the seemingly unlikely subject of NAFTA. It’s 2000, the Bush presidency just around the corner, and the impact of the acronymic North American Free Trade Agreement is about to hit the country's industrial heartlands. It sounds like a laxative, one character jokes – a throwaway remark that proves to have a bitter truth behind it. By the end of her 2015 Pulitzer prize-wining drama, now transferred from the Donmar to the West End, Nottage will Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A starring role for Scrabble is one of the things that sets this small-scale but deceptively affecting film apart. Writer Frank Cottrell Boyce (a regular collaborator with Michael Winterbottom) based his script on his own short story, Triple Word Score, and with director Carl Hunter has developed it into a beautifully crafted meditation on loss and learning to live with your mistakes.The fastidiously-dressed Alan (Bill Nighy, doing a nicely underplayed Liverpool accent) is a tailor by trade and a Scrabble obsessive by choice. He’s also a bit of a con-man, as we learn when he hustles Arthur ( Read more ...
Tom Baily
All is not well in Boston, Lincolnshire. Unemployment, immigration concerns, Brexit frustration, and the highest murder rate in the country. How do you solve the problems of contemporary Britain? Send in an American. And not just that. Bill Hixon (Rob Lowe) is the best: educated to Doctorate level, with the accolade of being America’s top Metropolitan police chief three years running. But Bill is also impatient, and lacks some basic people skills (not to mention he can’t grasp British irony and sarcasm). He’s also brought his teenage daughter Kelsey (Aloreia Spencer) with him. We gather that Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre is a feat of exuberant brilliance, a gender-juggling romp that takes Shakespeare’s subversive text and polishes it so that it glints and shines like a glitterball at a disco. No holds are barred in this ecstatic 21st-century take, in which sexualities – as well as lovers – are swapped, the rude mechanicals get distracted by taking selfies, and Oberon, rather than Titania, loses his head for an ass.Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie has star billing here in the traditionally twinned roles of Titania and Hippolyta. Yet it’s not Read more ...
Ellie Porter
“Lenny’s coming! Lenny’s coming!” When the lights go down at the O2 tonight, it’s not just the small child behind us who’s excited. Support act Corinne Bailey Rae has done a good job in getting the crowd in the mood (unfortunately, we miss most of her set due to queue mismanagement – a real shame), and a thrilled ripple goes through the crowd when Kravitz appears on a raised walkway, framed dramatically between two giant curved golden horns rising up from the stage.In tan leather jacket, flared jeans, heels and massive shades, the charismatic 55-year-old Kravitz looks like he could have been Read more ...