Reviews
Thomas H. Green
For new, independent artists, access to putting music on vinyl can seem daunting, especially to those who’ve grown up in the era of virtual music. There are schemes out there to counter this, notably the VF Selects programme, wherein the self-explanatory Vinyl Factory, together with FACT online magazine and the crowd-funding site Born.com, offer an opportunity. Between these organizations, the weight of funding, production and promotion is carried. Music is vetted, partly, by considering what chance it might have of selling, but, then, that’s been the way of all art forever, so it’s surely Read more ...
David Kettle
An underage prostitute dies from a drug overdose at a mini “bunga bunga” party with a high-ranking politician. When that’s one of a film’s less shocking moments, you know you’re in for a bumpy ride.With its steady stream of killings, maimings, kidnap and a frothing-mouthed killer canine, Stefano Sollima’s brutal crime thriller exploring corruption and violence among mafia clans, politicians and even the church in Rome is undeniably vicious and uncompromising. But it’s a beautifully elegant, taut piece of storytelling, too, which unfolds its intertwining threads with almost clockwork precision Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Harold Brighouse's time-honoured English comedy from a century ago survives, its virtues mostly intact especially once attention shifts away from the snarling patriarch of the title, Henry Horatio Hobson (a padded Martin Shaw), to the generation of women beneath him – his peppery, politically and socially progressive eldest daughter, Maggie (Naomi Frederick), chief among them.Director Jonathan Church, the former Chichester Festival Theatre chief here doubling as co-producer, does well to release the Lear-like underpinnings of a play, set in 1880 Lancashire, that charts its own portrait of an Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Disappearance, shown in France a year ago, was adapted from a Spanish drama. Both shows had a more gender-specific title: Desaparecida or Disparue. A less abstract translation into English might have been The Missing, but that title had already been taken by a recent BBC drama with which The Disappearance shared a dogged fidelity to a template (see also Broadchurch, plus a lot of Nordic noir): one fresh suspect per episode, enough false leads to set up a red herring factory, and then a big reveal to finish [spoiler alert: the denouement is discussed below].The titular absentee was Léa Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Punk rock, or what’s touted as punk rock, is practically inescapable right now. In London, a series of events tagged as Punk.London: 40 Years of Subversive Culture includes concerts by reanimated bands, exhibitions and film seasons. Backers include the British Fashion Council, the British Film Institute and the Design Museum. The Mayor of London is an official supporter. Sponsorship has come from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The year 1976 was apparently when punk began, and it’s time for these august bodies to celebrate the anniversary.Joe Corré, the son of Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mozart operas on period instruments – it’s hardly a new idea, but it’s still the exception rather than the rule. The 18th–century sound has a lot to offer in Don Giovanni, as Ian Page and his Classical Opera Company demonstrated this evening. Clear string tone and vibrant woodwind colours were the order of the day. There was plenty of drama too, with Page expertly pacing the narrative and drawing an impressive and often robust tone from his modest forces. He also assembled a fine cast, no superstars here but rather a well-balanced and well-integrated ensemble. The result was a compelling Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It was an exhumation waiting to happen. As the UK ponders trashing Europe, Eurotrash was summoned from the grave to remind voters what they’ll be missing if enough Brits put an X in the exit box. The Europe of Eurotrash is not grey suits and fisheries legislation. It’s a place where a ruling on the straightness of cucumbers is a gag waiting to happen, where pooches and porn stars stand for political office, where the then future Madame Sarkozy could be distinctly heard to ask, “Do you like my titties?”.It’s not easy or appropriate to write about Eurotrash the day after the referendum Read more ...
David Kettle
It should have been a complete disaster. Not announcing your festival’s programme until barely a week before it started ought to have guaranteed that nobody knew about it – no press, no audiences, other plans made, other things booked.But still they came. It’s testament to the Cottier Chamber Project’s now firmly established place in Scotland’s summer musical life – this is its sixth year – that even keeping audiences in the dark as to what was planned didn’t deter them.That bizarre delay was down to questions over two major funders, artistic director Andy Saunders has explained. And it can’t Read more ...
graham.rickson
Ilya Beshevli: Wanderer (Village Green)Siberian musician Ilya Beshevli's background will resonate with anyone who's resented learning an instrument. The son of a composer and a musicologist, Beshevli grew to dislike his enforced piano lessons, envious of his non-musical peers who were allowed to play outside while he practised. He returned to the instrument by chance in his early twenties. In his words, “I feel like I'm lacking basic knowledge... nevertheless, I'm studying music at university at the moment and we'll see what this will bring...” This is a hard album to pigeonhole: best to Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"I can add colours to the chameleon," Richard III remarks of himself early in his anguished, marauding ascent to the throne, and the description could equally apply to the electrifying actor, Ralph Fiennes, who is London's latest hedgehog/dog/toad/bottled spider (pick your animal imagery of choice).Marking his third London stage appearance in 16 months, Fiennes may be older than most modern-day Richards but he cuts more deeply as well, his Almeida return coupling flashes of the charm this actor brought last year to Man and Superman with liberal dollops of the gathering psychosis in which Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Here comes the Switch House. The 10-story new build attached to the Gilbert Scott Bankside power station that was the first instalment of Tate Modern in 2000 opened to the public this weekend. Tate Modern’s expansion became almost a necessity as the original estimate of two million annual visitors became five million. Designed by the Basel-based duo of Herzog and de Meuron, also responsible for the original Tate Modern, it is an astonishing building which is intended, much more overtly than its mother gallery, to change the ways in which the public approaches and understands contemporary art Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The earliest known versions of Rapunzel and Cinderella appeared in an Italian compendium of fairytales known as the Pentamerone. They were collated by Neapolitan courtier Giambattista Basile and published in the 1630s after his death. The 50-strong anthology also includes versions of Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty and Hansel and Gretel. None of these familiar stories has made it into Tale of Tales, Matteo Garrone’s cinematic sampler of Basile’s collection. Instead he has plumped for three lesser-known fables, each of them illustrating the moral folly of ruling potentates.No doubt for Read more ...