Reviews
Boyd Tonkin
Victims of their own success in the postwar era of well-recorded sound, the Brandenburg Concertos first arrived in the ears of listeners from my generation via glossy, plush and polished recordings by heavyweight orchestras of a sort that would have baffled Bach. Four decades ago, period-conscious bands began to strip the gloopy varnish off and let the strange, bold paintwork beneath shine. Yet the look, and sound, of these six pieces “for several instruments”, rather obsequiously dedicated by the job-seeking Bach to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721, can still startle audiences. Last Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You might assume that the “Has Fallen” in the title of this Anglo-French thriller connotes the presence of Scottish lunk Gerard Butler (as in Angel Has Fallen, London Has Fallen and Olympus Has Fallen), but there’s no Gerard in sight. Instead, in this TV spin-off from the movie series, we have Tewfik Jallab (pictured below) as protection officer Vincent Taleb, who’s acting as minder to France’s defence minister Philippe Bardin (Nathan Willcocks).When terrorist mayhem breaks out at a plush reception at the British Embassy in Paris, Vincent finds himself teaming up with feisty, fearless MI6 Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Natalie Palamides doesn't do things by halves. Actually, the Los Angeles-based clown does just that in her inventive new show Weer – a hit at the Traverse Theatre at this year's Edinburgh Fringe – in which she plays the male and female partners in a fractious relationship. Simultaneously.Weer – the title is explained late on – tells the story of Mark and Christina. Palamides' costume and wig are divided into male and female halves, so as her left side is turned to the audience she is Christina, with her right side, she is Mark. It is, as you may imagine, a very physical performance, but Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Amy Taylor and the rest of the Sniffers ambled onto the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Academy to a huge roar of approval from a packed and diverse audience on Sunday evening. With her Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, toothy smile, sparkly bikini, knee length boots and shorts she didn’t look the firebrand that her image suggests – but looks are frequently deceptive, as Birmingham was to find out.In fact, Taylor laid down the simple but iron rules of the night before Declan Mehrtens had even strapped on his guitar: “If anyone falls down, pick ‘em up. Don’t touch anyone that doesn’t want to be touched.” Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
“Previously on Wolf Hall…” It’s been nine years since Claire Foy memorably trembled her way to the block as Anne Boleyn, recapped at the start of the second and final season of the BBC’s handsome Hilary Mantel adaptation. It’s a deathbound affair for all, though.The author herself is now dead; the original actor playing the Duke of Norfolk, Bernard Hill, as well, with Timothy Spall taking his place. Henry VIII’s pustulant leg has reduced his gait to an ominous slow limp; Jane Seymour – whom, the cross-cutting in Peter Straughan’s script suggests, he seems to be marrying concurrently with Read more ...
David Nice
Out of innumerable Rite of Springs in half a century of concert-going, I’ll stick my neck out and say this was the most ferocious in execution, the richest in sound. Others may have wanted a faster, lighter Rite. But the two things that make every concert conducted by Klaus Mäkelä so extraordinary are that he inhabits the music to a visibly high level, and that he gets the fullest tone and urgent phrasing from every instrument.This was a love-in between players and conductor, and an exciting first for the London Symphony Orchestra. I remember former tuba-player Patrick Harrild saying of Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Mac is in prison for a long stretch. He is calm, contemplative almost, understands how to do his time and has only one rule – nobody, cellmate or guard, can touch the photo of his daughter, then three years old, attached to his wall. Though he is a man who gets through the days with few problems, he solves them through violence. On his release, his only wish is to find the daughter who will have forgotten him. Scratch (spiritual sister of Maxine in the playwright's 2022 monologue, Wolf Cub) is a wild child. With no mother (we soon guess why) and a father inside, she grows up in care Read more ...
Graham Fuller
There’s a jolt or a surprise in almost every shot in Andrea Arnold’s Bird – her most impacted and energised depiction of underclass life yet. Photographed by Robbie Ryan, it’s a visual tour de force, one of the most exhilarating British films of 2024, but the affecting story it tells is undermined by its fleeting embrace of magical realism and the climactic swoop of a deus ex machina.Despite these caveats, Arnold remains British cinema’s most trenchant and influential portrayer of neglected, endangered girls and young women living in brutal or inhospitable environments. Claire Oakley’s Make Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The last we had was a bit of a flop. I own up about it, it was quite bad.” Speaking to the BBC’s Brian Matthew on 4 April 1967, Yardbirds’ frontman Keith Relf is candid about the chart fate of his band’s last single, October 1966’s “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”Hearing a major figure in British pop being so frank is made doubly surprising as “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” was an epoch-defining single, one of the earliest signals that psychedelia was looming. Despite having broken ground, Relf was speaking in terms of chart positions rather than innovation. Relatively, though, it had Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
It takes a lot to make an audience not want to head to the bar at the interval. But the preparation of the stage floor for The Rite of Spring in the version by Pina Bausch is a piece of theatre in itself, and many at Sadler’s Wells couldn’t tear themselves away. This is the second time that Sadler’s has hosted this special production of Bausch’s extraordinary response to Stravinsky’s score. The choreography dates back to 1975, and for years was exclusively danced by Bausch’s home company. The idea of assembling and training a pan-African troupe to present it came much later, in a bid to Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Until 2022, the lovely 18th century church of St Mary-le-Strand was a traffic island, ignored and unloved and rarely visited. Then came the pedestrianisation of the section of the Strand outside Somerset House, transforming the area from somewhere polluted and dangerous, to a walkable piazza, and transforming the church into what is now dubbed “The Jewel in the Strand”. In recent times its musical offering has been similarly revived, both liturgically (there is now a regular Choral Evensong) and as a concert venue, under the auspices of Warren Mailley-Smith, as both impresario and pianist. Read more ...
David Nice
Having all but sunk one seemingly unassailable opéra comique, Bizet’s Carmen, director Damiano Michieletto goes some way to helping out another with so many problems. Not far enough, alas, but the chosen edition, with its reams of recitative (mostly not by Offenbach), doesn’t help. Nor does the theme of women as either dolls, angels or devils. The real Hoffmann did it all so much better.Never mind: this is where we are, so how well are the tales of the poet’s three loves and the frame in which a fourth battles it out with a demon and a muse sung, played and directed? There are some Read more ...