Reviews
Heather Neill
Don Quixote and his paunchy sidekick long ago escaped the pages of Miguel de Cervantes' novel. The image of the sad-faced knight on his bony nag Rocinante with his companion Sancho Panza atop his donkey are familiar in film, opera, paintings and everything from kitchen tiles to cartoons and furnishing fabric. The knight himself foretold their afterlife, predicting that his exploits would be memorialised in paintings and sculpture. These two - who never existed - may be the most recognisable Spaniards of all time.Cervantes' best-known work, credited as a fountainhead of Western fiction, is Read more ...
David Nice
How many times have you heard live in concert a concerto for string quartet and instrumental ensemble? In my case, three, all of the occasions performances of John Adams's Beethoven-based giant scherzo Absolute Jest. Two more got added to the list last night in Vladimir Jurowski's typically rich and rare compendium which ticked quite a few boxes: as a showcase for strings, wind and brass respectively; as centenary homage to an independent Czechoslavakia; and (though this was not acknowledged in the programme) as a reminder that it was 80 years ago this coming December that the first Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“Why should I go out and kill somebody I never knew? There was no reason at all in it in my way of thinking.” Britain’s very last Tommy was Harry Patch, born in 1898, conscripted in 1916 and still alive on his 111th birthday in 2009. He was one of the witnesses in The Last Tommies, BBC Four’s remarkable work of oral history.The centrepiece of the BBC’s centenary commemoration of the Armistice unspooled over three nights, collating interviews made over 30 years. Its impact may be slightly occluded by Peter Jackson’s unmissable They Shall Not Grow Old this coming Sunday 11 November, which takes Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s clear from the start – from a Prologue that quickly dissolves familiar rhythms and words into a Babel of clamour and sound. This RSC Romeo and Juliet, newly transferred to the Barbican, isn’t much interested in what is said. Actions not words are what count in Erica Whyman’s swift, youthful staging – a production that dances on the balls of its feet like a boxer, always braced for attack, and ready to lunge in its turn. Do its dramatic blows land? Often they do, though it lacks the knock-out punch that really should floor you by the end.Tom Piper’s set is an unprepossessing thing. A Read more ...
aleks.sierz
You can see why artistic director Indhu Rubasingham chose to stage this version of Zadie Smith's classic White Teeth as part of the Kiln's opening season. The bestselling 2000 debut novel is set in Willesden, Kilburn and thereabouts so it's a good fit for what is essentially a play that pays tribute to the area's multicultural character. Ironically, of course, the Kiln's previous incarnation, the Tricycle Theatre is mentioned in the book, and Canute-like protestors outside the venue continue to campaign in vain for the old name to be reinstated. But how does Stephen Sharkey's adaptation cope Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“That’s what we fucking do!” So says Maxim at the concert’s very end, surveying the sweating, raving carnage of 4,500 souls before him. One of The Prodigy’s two frontman, he stands still finally, after spending the rest of the gig pacing and rushing up and down the lip of the stage like a caged panther. We all know what he means. He means that his band have wrung us out, taken us to a fervour of devil-may-care limb-swinging derangement. The Prodigy always bring the party and, yet again, 28 years into their career, they wreak havoc in a way very few bands of any age or era can.The stage Read more ...
Matt Wolf
To the recent spate of shows that put their own narrative-building first, we can now add Still No Idea, with the addendum that this self-penned two-hander may be the funniest and fiercest of them all to date. Eight years ago, Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence brought to the Young Vic their show No Idea; the starting point there was to throw open to the public a possible narrative for a theatre evening featuring one performer who is disabled (Hammond) and another who is not (Spence).Have prospects improved much in the interim? The title of this Royal Court-Improbable collaboration, written by Read more ...
Maev Kennedy
The most touching tribute to the relationship between two giants of early 20th century art, Gustav Klimt and the much younger Egon Schiele, hangs in the first room of this fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy – Schiele’s poster for the 49th Secessionist exhibition in 1918. It shows a group of artists around a table, an empty chair at one end – that of Klimt, who had died of pneumonia in February. Schiele has included his own ramshackle self seated at the opposite end, gazing at the place which should be occupied by his friend, mentor and inspiration, not knowing that within Read more ...
David Nice
Lightness and gravity in perfect equilibrium have always graced Vladimir Jurowski's Stravinsky. From his first London Rake's Progress at English National Opera, proving that he could do the delicate and translucent after his Royal Opera debut conducting Verdi's Nabucco, via the Glyndebourne revival to this, much the most strongly cast, a London Philharmonic Orchestra concert staging – direction uncredited – executed with more ingenuity than several recent productions, Jurowski's sleight of hand has been paramount. Though the finesse is remarkable, there's no need to put words like "emotion" Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The master of the Southern California police procedural is back. In Dark Sacred Night Michael Connelly puts centre stage his oldest creation, the Vietnam veteran turned original, ethical policeman who marches to his own moralities, Hieronymous – aka known, natch, as Harry – Bosch, paired for the first time with his newest one, the resourceful Renée Ballard. Billed as the new “Bosch & Ballard tale”, it is the first novel in which they meet and work together, chapters alternating between the two.The pairing of loners is typical. Bosch’s overwhelming need, now that he is retired but working Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although John & Beverley Martyn and Mott The Hoople were both signed to Island, the connection went further than being with the same label. When Guy Stevens conceived the band he named Mott The Hoople, the producer saw them as uniting the essence of Bob Dylan with that of The Rolling Stones. On their eponymous first album, issued in 1969, Ian Hunter’s vocals are so like Dylan it edges into the preposterous. That same year John & Beverley Martyn made Stormbringer! in Woodstock. Two of its tracks featured The Band’s Levon Helm on drums. Dylan was a couple of steps away.Despite the Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
National feeling – in music, as anywhere else – depends on choice, not blood. This BBC Symphony Orchestra concert at the Barbican to mark the centenary of Poland’s rebirth as a nation never felt remotely like a feast of aural jingoism. In fact, its most explicit and whole-hearted invocation of Polish tunes and styles came not from a native son but from (who else?) Edward Elgar. He wrote his little-played Polonia in 1915 to aid relief efforts for refugees after the Great War had (yet again) sent German and Russian boots crashing bloodily over Polish soil.Amid its suitably stirring nods to Read more ...