Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Four of Humanhood’s 13 tracks are short, impressionistic mood pieces. Between 48 seconds and just-over a minute-and-a-half long, they mostly lack singing. Instrumentation is jazzy, leaning on piano and wind instruments. Drones and white noise evoke ocean spray or wind. In one case, a wordless vocal edges towards articulating recognisable syllables.While these harmonise with the whole of Humanhood so are not discrete musical sketches, they point to the feelings of disassociation and fragmentation informing Tamara Lindeman’s seventh album as The Weather Station (the multiple selves seen in the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Into a world of grooming gangs, human trafficking and senior prelates resigning over child abuse cases comes Oliver!, Lionel Bart’s masterly musical. Is its grim tale of workhouses, pickpockets and domestic violence an awkward fit with today’s values? On paper, probably yes. Here, loyal Nancy is still a victim of her brutal lover, little Oliver is not spared becoming a felon in the eyes of the law, Fagin is a gangmaster with criminal intent. But this latest West End production is soft-centred alongside the Dickens and delivers just what fans of this wonderful score will want: impeccable Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In the late Eighties and Nineties, Tony Slattery became one of the most ubiquitous faces on television, appearing regularly on Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Have I Got News For You while popping up in quizzes and sitcoms all over the place (as well as in the movies Peter’s Friends and The Crying Game). He even became a film critic for a while, hosting Saturday Night at the Movies.It was probably inevitable that Slattery’s exhausting hyperactivity and somewhat self-admiring persona would begin to pall, but nobody would have predicted the scale of the calamity that befell him. Having become Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Forthright and upright, powerful and lucid, the frank and bold pianism of Leif Ove Andsnes took his Wigmore Hall audience from Norway to Poland (or rather, Paris and Majorca) with a final stop in France. A recital that began with two large-scale Norwegian sonatas – one a remarkable discovery – culminated in the ostensibly remote sound-world of Chopin’s 24 Preludes, part-written on the Balearic island.Yet Andsnes’s sturdy, direct, immaculately even-tempered, playing united these disparate territories, and even stamped his Debussy encore with the same robust character. Fans of a more nebulous, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It seems The Osmonds may not have been the worst outrage perpetrated on an unsuspecting public by the Mormons. American Primeval is set in the 1850s, and is based around the real-life massacre of settlers travelling from Arkansas to California by the Mormon militia known as as the Nauvoo Legion. This took place at Mountain Meadows, Utah, apparently triggered by rising tensions between the US federal government and Mormon leader Brigham Young.Directed by Peter Berg (Deepwater Horizon, Lone Survivor etc) and created by screenwriter Mark L Smith (Twisters, The Revenant), American Primeval uses Read more ...
Robert Beale
Top Brownie points for the BBC Philharmonic for being one of the first (maybe the first?) to celebrate the birth centenary of Pierre Boulez this year. His Rituel – in memoriam Bruno Maderna was paired somewhat uneasily with a second half of bonbons by Ravel (it’s his 150th anniversary year, too).Mark Wigglesworth was the maestro who piloted both parts of the programme, however, showing equally calm assurance and sympathy with their differing idioms.Boulez’ tribute to another 20th century modernist was the longest piece on the list, and made a suitably solemn tribute as well as providing early Read more ...
Gary Naylor
There are two main reasons to revive classics. The first is that they are really good; the second is that they have something to say about how the world is changing, perhaps more accurately, how our perception of it is changing. Both are true of Annie Kershaw’s slick, sexy, shocking production of Martin Crimp's translation, up close and personal, at the Jermyn Street Theatre.Even if you haven’t seen the play (and, with productions as frequent as they have been, many buying tickets for this sold out run will have) the set-up is familiar. Two maids, resentful of their unpredictable and needy Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Europe's biggest comedy festival, which showcases established stars, works in progress, workshops and competitions, kicks off next month, and this gala show certainly whetted our appetites for its 700-plus events. It was hosted by the nimble-witted Maisie Adam.David Eagle may have been a new name to some in the audience but he ended the first half on a high. He's blind, and gets some very strong material from it – “I've hit the ground running. Occupational hazard,” he deadpanned, strapping on an accordion. While some hearts may have sank at the sight, he then performed a wickedly funny, Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Can any line from The Second Act be taken at face value? Not really. “I should never have made this film,” confides Florence (the starry Léa Seydoux) just before the half-way mark. It's just another line from a script.The film’s working title had originally been the heavily ironic À notre beau métier (which translates as "to our beautiful profession"). Writer-director Quentin Dupieux has Seydoux and her co-stars Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, and Raphaël Quenard playing actors cast as actors who constantly criss-cross between the roles they are supposed to be portraying – in a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Yeti Lane’s second album The Echo Show was released in March 2012. The Paris-based duo’s LP was stunning: holding together overall, as well as on a track-by-track basis. There were obvious influences: Kraftwerk, late-period Spacemen 3, motorik, My Bloody Valentine. But it didn’t sound like anyone else. Charlie Boyer and Ben Pleng had created a wonder.The Echo Show, released by the Sonic Cathedral label, still sounds great. If it was issued next month or next year, it would still sound great. Eternally fresh. Back in 2012 it seemed to arrive from nowhere. Yeti Lane’s first album had come out Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As Bono once commented about Luciano Pavarotti, “the opera follows him off stage”. Legendary soprano Maria Callas would have known exactly what he meant, and she herself said “an opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down.”Pablo Larraín’s Maria completes his trilogy of films about famous and charismatic women at critical moments in their lives, the others being Jackie Kennedy (Jackie, 2016) and Princess Diana (Spencer, 2021). It picks up the daunting challenge of evoking the life but above all the myth of La Callas, one of a handful of opera legends who Read more ...
Gary Naylor
This Celine Dion jukebox musical has been a big hit in New York, but crossing The Atlantic can be perilous for any production, so, docked now at the Criterion Theatre, does it sink or float?We open on a framing device, with a group of tourists being shown round a Titanic museum (there’s a whole industry built up around its legend). Any interest/concern that we’re in for a probing analysis of the ethics of monetising the tragic deaths of over 1500 souls due to, at the very least, some element of corporate negligence, is dispelled by a guide who is just aching to go full jazz hands and sing and Read more ...