Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Sharks were formed in 1972 by bassist Andy Fraser after he left Free. There were two albums, line-up changes and ripples which resonated after the band spilt in 1974. A 2017 reunion album featured former Sex Pistol Paul Cook on drums. “Sophistication,” from Sharks' 1974 second album Jab It In Yore Eye, had an insistent riff Mick Jones repurposed for The Clash's “Should I Stay or Should I go.”There is more to Sharks’ aftermath, but the dovetailing with what would become British punk rock is, on the face of it, unlikely. Sharks were a band born from the aftershocks of the late sixties Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ro first saw Fat Dog, before anyone had heard of them, at the Windmill in Brixton in front of a crowd of about 25 people. Their manic energy blew her head off. Vanessa and Al K first caught Fat Dog at the Rockaway Beach Weekender in Bognor Regis Butlins in January ’24. The tightly choreographed, manic show was the best thing all weekend.I first saw Fat Dog on the packed-to-capacity slope of Strummerville at Glastonbury last year. There was a wild frenetic buzz in the air. First exposure to Fat Dog’s unlikely, frenzied musical gumbo sent all our brains reeling and our feet moving. But Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
George Gershwin called one of his early classic songs, first created by Fred and Adele Astaire, “Fascinating Rhythm”. It was that mesmeric pull that propelled last night’s Royal Festival Hall Concert from the Philharmonia and its principal guest conductor, Marin Alsop.Every item might fit under the rubric of “dance-derived music of the Americas”, but beneath that broad-brimmed hat multiple genres leapt, strutted and twirled. As a special Valentine’s Day treat, we even enjoyed some onstage moves when tango champions Adrien Bariki-Alaoui and Iro Davlanti-Lo rounded off the evening with two, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
I always advocate in favour of more sci-fi plays, and over the past decade there have been a gratifying number of them. But one essential element of any futuristic fantasy must be its power to convince. And it is precisely this that is missing from Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman’s More Life, currently in the studio space of the Royal Court.These two theatre-makers, who run the Kandinsky theatre company, have had a good light-bulb moment: how would you, and your nearest and dearest, cope with the reality of eternal life? Set in 2075, the play shows how Bridget – who was killed 50 years Read more ...
Nick Hasted
In his first weeks in office, Harrison Ford’s US president survives an assassination attempt inside the White House, goes to war with Japan and mutates into Red Hulk when he gets mad, trashing said White House with a Stars and Stripes flag-holder. How unrealistically reasonable this looks, you may wistfully think. If only Ford, or a 10-foot monster, was in charge.Captain America has often been a political figure, sharing his comic’s title with black superhero the Falcon in the Seventies while uneasily confronting black civil unrest and Vietnam, the simply patriotic World War Two hero bearing Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Russia.It’s impossible to be ambivalent towards that word, that country, indeed that idea, one so very similar to our own, yet so very different. You feel it in Moscow, where I spent a week exactly 40 years ago. Like London, it is a vast city, imperial in ambition, a true believer in its past and present, but then, as now, uncertain of its future. It is also not like London at all, crowded with strange buildings, cold beyond description, peopled by frightened men and women. There’s an irony in the fact that I learned more about my own home in seven days spent 1800 miles away than I did in Read more ...
David Nice
Does any living composer write better for choirs, or more demandingly when circumstances allow, than James MacMillan? Admirable as it is to have extant words and music for a music-drama, morality play, call it what you will, by medieval pioneer Hildegard of Bingen, her imagining of a soul torn between virtues and Satan is inevitably one-dimensional. MacMillan finds variety and surprises in response to her text at ever turn of this 80-minute epic.Hildegard’s musical language in c.1150 was necessarily monophonic; experiencing the full hour can be a fine meditative experience. MacMillan's choral Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ridley Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down was a technically superb blockbuster bristling with thunderous action sequences and famous actors, though its gung-ho depiction of the heroics of American special forces during the appalling Somalian civil war always felt a little uncomfortable.A quarter of a century later, Netflix’s three-part series Surviving Black Hawk Down, directed by Jack Macinnes and produced by Ridley Scott Associates, attempts to paint a more even-handed picture. It’s a documentary-style account of events, told by some of the real participants, interspersed with action Read more ...
James Saynor
The Refugee Movie is rapidly becoming a genre unto itself, with elements of suspense and humanism woven together into something that’s very properly cinematic.Films like Io Capitano and Green Border, tracking the tragic migrant trail to and through Europe, prick consciences and sweat palms in equal measure, but those two fine examples from last year were made by European directors on helicopter missions, as it were, to raise consciousness and to mine fresh seams of character.To a Land Unknown is a story of Palestinian refugees actually made by a Palestinian, Mahdi Fleifel, and it’s an Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwrights who work for decades often acquire a moniker. In the case of Howard Brenton, who began his career as a left-winger in the turbulent 1970s, the name is The History Man. Over the past decade, or so, he has written brilliantly about historical figures such as, among others, Anne Boleyn, Charles I, Lawrence of Arabia – and many more.Now it’s the turn of Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, two titans of the allied side in the second world war. Churchill in Moscow reunites Brenton with Tom Littler, the successful artistic director of the Orange Tree Theatre in their sixth Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Bridget Jones has grown up: v.v.g. Our heroine is still prone to daft pratfalls and gaffes and bursts of sensational idiot dancing. But passing time has lent her an enhanced self-awareness that has nothing to do with calories consumed. This Bridget can bring the pinprick of tears to the eyes as well as make you laugh.The first generation of Bridget fans, like her creator Helen Fielding, are now in their sixties and beyond, and possibly experiencing, like Bridget (and Fielding), the loss of a partner through divorce or death. Bridget’s beloved Mark Darcy (Colin Firth, pictured below with Read more ...
David Nice
So the Royal Opera had assembled a dream cast, conductor (Edward Gardner) and director (Richard Jones). The only question until last night was whether composer Mark-Anthony Turnage would be at his remarkable best. His operatic journey has been uneven, but one thing is now certain: adapting the first Dogme 95 movie, Festen by Thomas Vinterberg, so shocking at a time (1998) when the issue of child abuse rarely surfaced in drama, has yielded music theatre of flawless pace and range.No-one should expect a faithful reflection of the film (which I haven't seen since its release knocked me for six Read more ...