Reviews
Katherine Waters
Mary Quant first made her name in 1955 with the wildly fashionable King’s Road boutique Bazaar. Initially selling a “bouillabaisse” of stock it was not until a pair of pyjamas she made was bought by an American who said he’d copy and mass produce them that Quant began dedicating herself to her own designs. Fittingly then, the V&A’s exhibition is not so much about the clothes as the attitude – commerce topped Quant’s priorities, fashion was the means.The roughly chronological exhibition is spread over two floors. While the lower level deals with the early, post-war years when Quant’s Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The wilds of Maine have been favourite country for novelist Stephen King, and they form the setting for this new version of his 1983 supernatural thriller (previously filmed in 1989). Dr Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moves his wife and two kids from big-city Boston and his stressful job as an ER medic to a rambling house in Ludlow, looking for more family time and a better quality of life. Dream on, doc.It all looks promising as the Creeds drive through winding, leafy lanes and admire the sprawling 50 acres surrounding their new abode. There’s a sudden menacing note, though, as the rural peace Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The vocal octet Voces8, approaching its 15th anniversary, is a purring musical machine: vocally top-notch, precisely and exhaustively rehearsed, imaginative in repertoire and equally at home in Monteverdi and Duke Ellington. And if the classical items grabbed me more than the kitsch swing numbers they ended with, there is no denying the whole concert was put together with panache and musical excellence.Voces8 perform more than 100 shows a year together and their sheer familiarity with each other shines through. They are very tight – even their bowing is perfectly synchronised. The spoken Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“We don’t love you any less.” A natural sentiment to express to your child when you’re separating from your partner, but the very fact of saying it plants doubts in the child’s mind as to whether you really mean it. As the audience of Wilderness at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, a new play written by Kellie Smith and directed by Hampstead regular Anna Ledwich, we feel Alistair’s doubts and fears keenly – mostly because we are him.The story treads familiar territory as parents Joe (Finlay Robertson) and Anne (Natalie Klamar) try to stay amicable for Alistair’s sake, and inevitably Read more ...
mark.kidel
Italy has a romance with rural grit and innocence and – perhaps not surprising in a country where the links between village and city are still very strong: Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro Felice) isn’t in any way derivative, but revisits some of the same territory as Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) and the Taviani Brothers’ Padre Padrone (1977) and Kaos (1984), all classics of the genre. These films share a worldview in which religious superstition, the cult of saints, a tradition of supernatural story-telling and the exploitation of the peasant class by the rich provide a Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Royal Northern College of Music’s spring opera is a theatrical triumph and musically very, very good. It’s 27 years since they last presented what Vaughan Williams called his "morality" – that was a triumph too, and they made a CD of it which I still have. They may not be issuing a sound recording this time, but as an experience in the theatre, it is even more compelling.The quality of the solo performances and of the choral singing is extraordinary. The RNCM clearly has some outstanding young men studying in its vocal faculty these days, and had the opportunity to cast from strength. In Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Caryl Churchill is a phenomenal artist. Not only has she written a huge body of work, but each play differs in both form and content from the previous one, and she has continued to write with enormous creative zest and flair well into her maturity. Now in her 80th year, she can look over her shoulder at a back-catalogue which is stuffed full of contemporary classics, and a handful of masterpieces. Her 1982 play, Top Girls, finally getting a revival at this national flagship, is her masterpiece of masterpieces. Yes, it's that good. It proves, if proof were needed, that she is clearly the best Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The DC Universe continues to back out of its dark dead end with this satiric kids’ film about the other Captain Marvel. In reality sulky 14-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel), he stays a callow teenager inside when the magic word Shazam transforms him into an invincible superhero, a contrast which allows winning goofiness almost throughout.Drawing on the veteran character’s 2011 comic-book reinvention, director David F. Sanberg and screenwriter Henry Gayden slip between the origins of Batson and his eventual nemesis Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong) with sly sleight of hand, beginning with the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Most people in the UK know American actor and stand-up Aziz Ansari from Parks and Recreation, where he played the sarcastic and underachieving local government official Tom Haverford. Comedy fans will also know him as a successful club comic on both US coasts, and from his Netflix specials. But in truth, most people now know him for the #MeToo imbroglio he found himself in last year, where a woman accused him of sexual misconduct on a date, which he denies, saying the encounter was consensual.So there is an air of “will he, won't he” in the room as Ansari performs his new show, Road to Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
If Gilbert and Sullivan did the Bible it would sound a lot like Hubert Parry’s Judith. Premiered in 1888 and last heard in London a year later, the oratorio – whose principal claim to fame is as the original home of tearjerker hymn tune Repton, better known as “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind – has been lovingly restored to life by conductor William Vann and the English Song Festival, who will record it with Chandos later this year.Fire and lashings of Old Testament brimstone all come tied up in a hearty musical bow. The setting may be Judah but the bucolic clarinets and horns are pure Albion Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
We live in a secular age, or so we’re told. Yet we seem to need rituals, the age-old practice and province of religion, as much as ever. It is the achievement of Peter Sellars and Sir Simon Rattle to present one without the other in their concert stagings – "ritualisations" – of the Bach Passions they have taken around Europe and to the US since the St Matthew was first shown this way in Berlin in 2011. Last night saw the premiere of the St John in London, much awaited, long-rehearsed and at times striking home with irresistible force."It’s not theatre. It’s a prayer," says Sellars. In truth Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
French director Jacques Audiard is a master at genre with a twist, most famously the prison drama A Prophet, but also a number of crime thrillers with atypical settings or themes, including The Beat that my Heart Skipped (classical music), Dheepan (political refugees) and Read My Lips (office politics). Audiard turns genre templates upside down, sometimes merges them, invariably with excellent results. Having now turned his attention to the western, it’s not surprising that he’s created one of the best I’ve seen for years. Based on Patrick DeWitt’ Read more ...