Reviews
Nick Hasted
Religion’s desire to fulfil humanity too often denies it instead. The cruelty of inflexible faith which breaks fallible adherents on its iron rules is at the core of this family drama, written and directed by former Jehovah’s Witness Daniel Kokotajlo. At times it seems a fictionalised, fly on the wall documentary on a secretive sect. More often, it’s a meditation on its female protagonists, observing their struggle in the flytrap of an unusual community.Alex Whitling (Molly Wright) has turned 18 when we meet her, an occasion marked not by wild partying, but her legal confirmation that she Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Beguiling echoes, patterns and symmetries accompanied the Hallé on this Proms journey through the enchanted forests of orchestral sound. Those mellow but irresistible horns that began the evening with the ethereal chug of the pilgrim’s hymn from the overture to Wagner’s Tannhäuser returned at the very end to celebrate victory over an evil sorcerer in a glorious finale to Stravinsky’s third Firebird suite. Neatly, the “Dresden” version of Wagner’s overture (which we heard) dates from 1845, whereas Stravinsky finished his final iteration of the music for Diaghilev’s 1910 ballet a century later Read more ...
Heather Neill
Jonathan Munby's production starring Ian McKellen, first seen last year in Chichester and now transferred to the West End, reflects our everyday anxieties, emphasising in the world of a Trump presidency, the dangers of childish, petulant authoritarianism. And while King James I was keen to promulgate the benefits of a united kingdom - having joined England and Scotland under his rule only three years before Shakespeare's tragedy was presented at court in 1606 - the corrosive nature of divisions within the state is equally clear now in the era of Brexit. The Union Flag features frequently in Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The image of a raging, narcissistic tyrant, convinced that he can crush even death into oblivion, has all too many resonances these days. So this visually spectacular National Theatre resurrection of Ionesco’s 1962 play, adapted and directed by Patrick Marber, promises to pack a punch beyond its absurdist proposition of a selfish child-man trying to dodge his mortality.The fact that the punch never quite seems to land is something of a mystery, since the evening features a crack cast, several brilliant one-liners, and a sensational set. Anthony Ward’s design is dominated by a large coat of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
There’s a particular quality to light seen from shadow. Think of the surface of the water glimpsed, hazy and haloed, as you swim upwards after a deep dive, or the smudged edges of city lights seen from a night flight. This concert by Ben Gernon and the BBC Philharmonic was an exercise in adjusted perspective. The sunny landscapes of Brahms’ Second Symphony and the smoky, slow-motion horror of 9/11 as viewed through Tansy Davies’ 9/11-inspired What Did We See? share little, but collided as they were here, each reframed the other, repositioned the listener.Premiered by English National Opera in Read more ...
Matt Wolf
If it's possible to have somewhat too much of a good thing, that would seem to be the case with the British premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory of Spamilton. The latest in the indefatigable catalogue of New York songwriter-satirist Gerard Alessandrini's skewering of the Broadway scene, Spamilton is unusual in focusing its title on a single entry, Hamilton, in all its manifestations, here including Tony-winner Daveed Diggs's hair. Oh, and his racial-ethnic background. Whether that degree of detail will mean much to a local audience, however Hamilton-savvy, makes one wonder Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Belatedly picking up from where series 2 of The Bletchley Circle left off in 2014, this comeback version has a go at transporting a couple of the original characters to the Californian West Coast, where they embroil themselves in the hunt for that old chestnut, a serial killer. On the evidence of this first of four episodes, it would be difficult to conclude that their journey was really necessary.Sadly, Anna Maxwell Martin hasn’t returned for this one, but it does bring back her co-stars Rachael Stirling as Millie Harcourt and Julie Graham as Jean McBrian. It’s 1956, and the women’s heady Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto combines the composer’s usual angst and nerviness with a sardonic humour, right from the opening bars, where the cello and orchestra seem to be playing in contradictory keys. At last night’s Prom, cellist Alisa Weilerstein played the opening motto not as a challenge, but as the continuation of a conversation already in progress. It was also very fast, which issued a different kind of challenge to the orchestra.The woodwind of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, heavily featured in this concerto as they so often are in Shostakovich, responded with some sparkling Read more ...
David Nice
Once the Proms season is under way, you soon regret dissing the prospectus. Connections become apparent, long-term programming a merit, especially this weekend just gone, which took us from elegies and meditations on two world wars heavenwards at the halfway point - Britten's cautious but still cathartic optimism at the end of the masterly Sinfonia da Requiem - and up to the heights of Beethoven's "Choral" finale and Mahler's Eighth. It was also a fabulous demonstration of how a world can be captured as much in a five-minute piece as a 90-minute so-called “Symphony of a Thousand”.We began Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This is the second Mission: Impossible movie written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the first time any director has been called back for an encore on the series. He did a smart job on 2015’s Rogue Nation, but this time he has pulled out every stop to deliver an escalating frenzy of action sequences that frequently leave you wondering how the hell they did that.The 56-year-old Tom Cruise continues to defy time and gravity. There's a batteringly physical rooftop chase in London where Cruise's Ethan Hunt has to make his way from the top of St Paul’s cathedral to the pinnacle of the tower Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Fens of East Anglia, and the lonely coasts that skirt them, usually sit well below the horizon of mainstream culture. Yet when England’s flatlands and their maritime margins do find a literary voice – in Graham Swift’s Waterland, say, or WG Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn – a mountainous achievement can result. If it never quite attains those heights, Stella Tillyard’s assured and entrancing second novel deserves a place of honour on this too-short Fenland shelf. Crucially, it also shows that this region long loved – or feared – for its mood of eerie isolation has a network of connections Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When The Blue Notebooks was originally released in February 2004, it did not seem to be an album which would have the afterlife it has enjoyed. It had little context. Max Richter’s second album was his first for the 130701 label which, at that point, had not yet set out its stall. Nonetheless, the label’s previous albums – especially Sylvain Chauveau’s Un Autre Décembre – provided evidence for a burgeoning minimalist undertow in contemporary music, one drawing on classical influences as much as ambient music, and one also unafraid of embracing electronica. 130701 was (and still is) at the Read more ...