Reviews
Kieron Tyler
In April 1973, John Peel wrote that “For my money, Tangerine Dream are the best of the Kosmische Music bands. Whenever any of their extended works are played on the radio there is a heavy mail from listeners. Most of the letter-writers are for it, those that are against it are very against it indeed. A Tangerine Dream track, heard superficially, is little more than a repetitive drone. Closer listening reveals a constantly shifting and evolving pattern – something like Terry Riley’s In C.”Peel began playing Tangerine Dream on his radio show in Autumn 1972 and went on to choose their fourth Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The Matthew Bourne Swan Lake has become a classic. And – lest that word conjure up dusty tomes and a niggling sense of obligation – this is definitively not the old-but-worthy, improving-but-dull kind of classic. This is the "where has this been all my life" kind, the "I've got to tell all my friends and relations" kind, the "blimey, I'd forgotten dance could be so good" kind.Twenty-three years – and many revivals – have come and gone since the male swans first went a-swimming in 1995, and Bourne and designer Lez Brotherston have given the show a face-lift for this run, updating some costumes Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Wow! First, the Black Panther team took cinema by storm; now, they have conquered theatre as well. Or, at least, two of them have. The Convert has been written by actor and playwright Danai Gurira (Okoye), and stars Letitia Wright (Shuri). Originally staged in the United States in 2012, and currently part of Kwame Kwei-Armah's first season at the Young Vic, this three-hour historical epic, which tells the harrowing story of an African Catholic believer's attempt to convert a young black woman in colonial South-East Africa, has a great cast which also includes Ivanno Jeremiah, Wright's Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When Bruce Springsteen’s one-man show opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on New York’s West 48th Street in October last year it was only supposed to run for six weeks. This being Springsteen, however, demand proved almost limitless, so the season was extended twice, and the Boss (as he doesn't like being called) takes his last bow on 15 December.So you never got a ticket? No worries. There’s an audio version of the show in various formats, and now Netflix is launching a full-scale film of the event, directed by Thom Zimny, which puts you right at the front of the stalls and lets you see Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Mark Ravenhill, who shot to fame in 1996 with his in-yer-face shocker Shopping and Fucking, has been more or less absent from our stages for about a decade. The last play of his that I saw at the Royal Court was the Cold-War fantasy Over There – that was in 2009. So his current show, called with brutal directness The Cane and about a teacher who used to administer corporal punishment, is something of a comeback. And it's got a cast that's hard to beat (sorry): Alun Armstrong, Maggie Steed and Nicola Walker. They are directed by Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the venue and Read more ...
David Nice
Once upon a time there was the terrible mouth of Richard Jones's Welsh National Opera/Met Hänsel und Gretel, finding an idiosyncratic equivalent to the original Engelbert Humperdinck's dark Wagnerian heart. Then came something very nasty in the witch's deep freeze of the last Royal Opera staging, something of a dog's dinner from Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. It seems that The House got cold feet about the cold store after tabloid uproar - though not so much as to stop a revival - and the result now is a much cleaner but not much more flavoursome fantasy by director-designer Antony Read more ...
Tim Cornwell
One emotional high point in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the much-lauded Simon Stephens adaptation that is back in our midst once more, comes when the teenage Christopher Boone is floated in the air as part of his dream of being an astronaut. It's a touchingly improbable, escapist fantasy – that a teenager with autism would be launched in a spacecraft – and it comes via a piece of stage magic when he is borne aloft by the rest of the ensemble cast, his pet rat, Toby, flying in tandem. Perhaps space is the solitary place where he won't panic and Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Welcome to your first day in the afterlife! Everything is fine! Eleanor Shellstrop (a sparkling Kristen Bell) is dead, but hey, that’s cool, because she’s made it into the Good Place. Michael (the divine Ted Danson) is architect of this brightly coloured afterlife with its abnormally high ratio of frozen yoghurt parlours. “People love frozen yoghurt. I don’t know what to tell you,” sighs Michael.He explains the algorithm for entry to Eleanor: after death, good and bad deeds are weighed up using a “totally accurate measuring system”. For example, ignoring a text message during an in- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The time of giving is here and what better presents than great slabs of lovely vinyl; sounds that bring joy to all. Our last theartsdesk on Vinyl of the year is packed with boxsets and reissues as well as a couple of seasonal bits. From a Shrek picture-disc to Kate Bush's entire back catalogue to Los Angeles’ latest alt-tronica, there are more music flavours here than even Santa can claim (having been to his crib, we can assure Santa’s vinyl collection is pretty limited, with the exception of a wall of Doom Metal). So, theartsdesk on Vinyl wishes you a top 2019 and every good thing for the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
For those of us who have never thought much before about links between pantomime and Shakespeare, Fiona Laird’s new Merry Wives offers a chance to see how the combination works. Making short shrift of tradition, her version of the Falstaff comedy transports the action to a distinctly contemporary environment, with The Only Way Is Essex the most obvious cultural reference point, though there’s surely a touch of Albert Square, too. At its best, it manages a rambunctious energy and humour that should cut through the objections of purists.Most such protests will be centred around its treatment of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The story of Lizzie Borden, controversially acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892, has been explored many times on screen and in print (there’s even an opera and a musical version, not to mention the Los Angeles metal band Lizzy Borden). However, this new take on the story starring Chlöe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart from director Craig William Macneill and screenwriter Bryce Kass focuses forensically on the why rather than the who, and transforms the story into a fraught and penetrating psychological thriller.Fittingly for our Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Royal Northern College of Music’s December opera production was the useful double bill of Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi from Puccini’s Trittico. I say useful, because the former employs a women’s chorus (and, briefly, a full one) plus 16 named roles, and the latter a cast of 16 – an opportunity for a big opera department to put plenty of its singers on the stage: it’s one they’ve taken before.This time there was the difference that the eponymous characters were sung by RNCM artists in residence Linda Richardson and Quentin Hayes – a first, as far as I’m aware, and one that gave poise Read more ...