Reviews
Gavin Dixon
The B Minor Mass comes in many shapes and sizes. Martin Feinstein opts for a bright and bijou approach, with period instruments, one to a part, and a choir of ten. The small ensemble sometimes lacks finesse, but makes up for it in dynamism, passion, and sheer joy. There was nothing chamber-scaled about this reading: it was all big gestures and direct emotions.Feinstein leads his eponymous ensemble from the flute. That can lead to curious ensemble dynamics, with many of the movements being led from the (essentially decorative) obbligato flute line. Generally, though, the ensemble is small Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Is greatness there from day one, does it evolve or suddenly strike? Do artists – in any discipline – develop in steps or arrive fully-formed? How does the quotidian become exceptional? With the new triple-CD set Highlife-Jazz and Afro-Soul (1963-1969), the man who would be dubbed the Black President has what amounts to 39 musical baby pictures made easily available for the first time. As to how this release answers any of these questions, it is a question of degree.First issued in Japan in 2005, Highlife-Jazz and Afro-Soul (1963-1969) was a pioneering collection of the bulk of Fela Kuti’s pre Read more ...
Veronica Lee
With a slightly changed cast and set-up from its Hogmanay-themed pilot, screened on New Year’s Eve 2015, this was the first of a six-part sitcom (written by Simon Carlyle and Gregor Sharp) about the residents of a street in suburban Glasgow.At its centre are Beth and Eric (Arabella Weir and Alex Norton), a middle-aged couple whose son, Ian (Jamie Quinn), has just decided to leave home and move in with his boyfriend, Jaz, but has yet to tell them. Two doors down live Cathy (Doon Mackichan, acting up a storm) and Colin (Jonathan Watson), while two doors down the other way are Christine and her Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Lorraine Hansberry’s career as a playwright proved tragically short. A Raisin in the Sun is by some distance her best-known work, a key piece about the African American post-war experience. But she thought Les Blancs (The Whites) was potentially her most important play, although it remained unfinished at her death in 1965, aged only 34; it was assembled from drafts by her ex-husband and executor Robert Nemiroff, finally reaching Broadway in 1970. Les Blancs expands Hansberry’s dramatic range enormously, taking us from the direct American realism of Raisin to an unspecified African Read more ...
David Nice
In the Wigmore's Lieder prayer meetings, baritone Christian Gerhaher is the high priest. There are good reasons for this, but given that the innermost circle of Wigmore Friends pack out his concerts, you do feel that the slightest criticism might merit lynching by the ecstatic communicants. His Schubert is never less than fascinating, but 2011's Winterreise kept its distance, while last night there were more question marks hovering over a Schubertiade of mostly semi-precious stones and only the odd jewel.Where is the unbroken line most of us first heard in his Wolfram at the Royal Opera Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
By finishing last in the ski jumping events at the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1988, Eddie Edwards became the epitome of the plucky no-hoper, a mediocre amateur equipped only with British true grit. He epitomised a curious strain in the national psyche, whereby our nation has been able to celebrate the calamity of Dunkirk as a heroic escapade, and endure with masochistic stoicism decades of humiliation in tennis or World Cup football.Still, being the solitary British Olympic ski jumper in history must be good for something, such as being tailor-made for a great British feelgood movie. Producer Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The tag-line for this definitively audacious Berlin thriller-love story writes itself: “One take. One night. Who survives?” Director Sebastian Schipper filmed Victoria in one take that roams through dozens of locations in Berlin’s empty small-hours streets, with dialogue improvised by his core young cast of five. Hitchcock tried something similar, editing Rope’s 10-minute takes to simulate continuous action much as Birdman did, while Orson Welles’ long, bravura opening shot in Touch of Evil was emulated at Boogie Nights’ start. Helped by modern camera technology, Schipper has aced them all in Read more ...
mark.kidel
Lesley Manville’s performance as Mary, the tortured morphine addict, wife and mother in Eugene O’Neill’s dark masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night, directed by Richard Eyre, is breathtaking, from the moment she first steps on stage until her last sombre soliloquy. The role of a woman prone to hysteria and self-deception invites over-acting, not least when the author has given her torrents of dope-driven lines, as well as placed her in desperately solipsistic isolation. But Manville manages to play the excess of a woman who is hanging onto life through a kind of pretense, without falling Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Even by the varied experiences of transferring Shakespeare to another culture, with the attendant revelations that come when an original story is modified to match a world governed by very different priorities, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is virtually in a class of its own. So it’s a curious thought that associations with King Lear were not in fact at the forefront of the great Japanese director’s mind when he started working in the mid-1970s on what would become his last full-scale epic.Instead his direct inspiration was the story of a 17th century feudal lord, whose three sons proved themselves Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Ernest Hemingway was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. But although his 1940 novel, For Whom the Bells Tolls, is familiar as a classic account of the Spanish Civil War, his play – which is set in Madrid at the height of the conflict – is, to put it mildly, less well known.Based on real people and real events, The Fifth Column is now revived for the first time in London by Two’s Company. But is this story of espionage and betrayal, which is Hemingway’s sole excursion into playwriting, anything more than a curiosity?His view of the women is superficial and sexistAt first Read more ...
David Nice
Some new operas worth their salt work a slow, sophisticated charm, but the handful that holler "masterpiece" grab you from the start and don't let go. Gerald Barry's shorn, explosive Wilde – more comedy of madness than manners – was so obviously in that league at its UK premiere in 2012, and has kept its grip in two runs of Ramin Gray's similarly against-the-grain production, now removed from the currently-closed Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House to the wider stage of the Barbican Theatre. It's still one of the few hysterically funny operas in the repertoire. The more you perceive its Read more ...
Marianka Swain
My skin is still tingling with the presence of imaginary critters. Never mind I’m A Celebrity… or Bear Grylls’s latest expedition – Tracy Letts has got them beat when it comes to nightmarish creepy-crawlies. But it’s not just a creature feature: this starry 20th anniversary revival at London’s newest pop-up theatre offers an eerie mirror to contemporary paranoia.Cocktail waitress Agnes (Kate Fleetwood) is holed up in a squalid Oklahoma City motel, tormented by calls from abusive ex Jerry (Alec Newman), recently released from prison. When RC (Daisy Lewis), who works with her at a local Read more ...