Taxi Tehran is Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s third film since the 2010 prohibition that, among other restrictions, forbade him from working in cinema for 20 years. While its very existence may count as an achievement in itself, much more importantly it’s also a lovingly cheeky riposte to those who have restricted his freedom of thought (and movement), as well as a reflection on narrative and how it is created.First there was This Is Not a Film from 2011, in which the director’s house arrest was reflected in the enclosed internal space of his home-filming. There was at least a change of Read more ...

If you thought the era of the impresario died with Diaghilev, think again. Alistair Spalding, chief executive of Sadler's Wells, has commercial and artistic vision in spades, and masterfully combines them in his operation at the Wells. Witness last night's show, Gravity Fatigue: inviting a fashion designer, even one as visionary as Hussein Chalayan, to create a dance show might seem like a risky (and expensive) venture, but the theatre was packed to the rafters, fashiony types mingling with the theatre's usual dance audience and all convinced they had come there for a major Artistic Event.It Read more ...

For a few very lucky competition winners there is a shopping trip where they are paraded around the world. A terrific opportunity, though a horrible experience, probably. Most competition winners have only a new line in their CV to stare at after the award ceremony, so the advantage of being a 2015 Tchaikovsky laureate, with a promise of an international tour with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, is self-evident.It also launches high expectations, given that Gergiev was also the competition’s chairman, and this year more than any the Russians were anxious to show that only talent Read more ...

Remember back when David Hare was left-wing? I’m not sure that he does. Between the affectionate, bittersweet nostalgia of South Downs and now The Moderate Soprano – a stroll through the verdant history of England’s most exclusive opera company – we’re suddenly a long way from the school of Slag or the urban anger of Racing Demon. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when – as here, in the programme interview – Hare claims that “heritage theatre is not my thing” it’s getting harder and harder to believe him.The anger has drained out of this theatre Read more ...

This was the fifth and last in a series of hour-long programmes amounting to a vivid, varied and extraordinarily lively history of Britain. Although ostensibly a history of portraiture, the images have been hooks for Simon Schama, that most ubiquitous historian who bears a rather charming resemblance to Tigger – very bouncy, very chatty, very enthusiastic, a little self-regarding – to subtly engage us in a journey through the political and social landmarks of British history. In this one, titled “The Face in the Mirror”, we did indeed bounce through nearly eight centuries of British artists Read more ...

Guitar Hero Live ★★★★My first encounter with the Guitar Hero music rhythm games stretches back to 2008. It involved British Sea Power, the Mercury Prize-nominated indie band, trooping into my living room to put an array of plastic guitars and drums through the musical motions. More bemused than amused, the professional musicians, renowned for intricately arranged guitar pop, struggled to hit the correct colour-coded notes in the right sequence as they appeared on the TV.“It’s great fun, but nothing like making music,” conceded Jan Scott Wilkinson, the front man, as he fumbled his way down a Read more ...

On record, Cat aka Chan Marshall is the quintessence of hip. From art-rock to blues, her vocals are cool and effortless. Live, however, things have been notoriously inconsistent. Google “Cat Power live”, and you will find a catalogue of stage meltdowns. Even her Wikipedia entry tells tales of drunken rants and abuse of fans. And yet for every gig disaster, there’s another rave review. When it comes to a Chan Marshall gig, it seems you pays your money and you takes your chances. As I queue up outside the huge Victorian St John-at-Hackney Church the moon is shining and fans are chatting in Read more ...

If the thought of three hours of DH Lawrence fills you with dread, fear not. Ben Powers’ inspired melding of Lawrence’s trio of mining plays births a spellbindingly intimate epic with atmosphere thick as the coal dust engulfing this cloistered 1911 East Midlands village. The community is powered and oppressed by the industrial machine swallowing up the menfolk, but our focus is on the women’s claustrophobic domestic sphere. In Bunny Christie’s effective design, houses are both contained spaces and bleeding into one another, with no walls but rooms marked out: somewhere between Our Town Read more ...

Carlos Acosta is that rare 21st-century phenomenon – a performer who has become a household name without the help of reality TV. Even people who run a mile from ballet know the story of the Havana slum boy made good through perseverance and pure talent, from countless primetime documentaries as well as a self-penned book and stage show. The Royal Ballet cannot have imagined how things would turn out when it signed its first (and, to date, only) black principal 17 years ago. For the past decade or more Acosta has been a powerful magnet for new audiences and widely adored.All this has Read more ...

There’s a baby boom in sitcom. This week two of last year’s best comedies return for second helpings, each with a child in tow. In Detectorists (BBC Two on Thursday) Andy is out in the field panning for gold with a small sweet addition. But first Catastrophe is back – and the title holds good. For Sharon and Rob (played by series creators Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney) parenthood is just as much of a disaster zone as the unplanned pregnancy which threw them together in the first series. And the jokes still come at you like rapid machine-gun fire.In fact, it’s possibly even funnier now. In the Read more ...

“No courtier or lady’s champion would dream of fighting a duel anywhere else…” The setting for duels, liaisons, champagne and love, Paris’s Pré aux Clercs gives its name to Ferdinand Herold’s almost-comic 1832 opera – a welcome mood-lightener in this season’s otherwise tragic fare at the Wexford Festival. But though the piece does end in marriages rather than deaths (at least, for those who matter), it’s not quite the uncomplicated piece of silliness we might expect, or hope, from such a staple of the Opéra Comique.The context – France’s 16th-century Wars of Religion – offers not only echoes Read more ...

A Hawksmoor church ought to be the right setting for the psychological terror of Britten’s great chamber opera, a slanted but still chilling adaptation of Henry James's novella. True, the once-deroofed interior has been coolly revamped as a rehearsal and performance venue, but imaginative lighting and a clear acting space, with room for a 13-piece ensemble to the side, ought to do the trick.Unfortunately this setting, straight from Aldeburgh, isn’t exactly that for what its "conceivers" describe as “not a conventionally staged production… not ‘semi-staged’, nor… a concert performance”. It’s Read more ...