Reviews
Hanna Weibye
It is an axiom of Israel Galván criticism to say the Spaniard is wired differently. He's the "Bowie of flamenco" - leggy and intense, unpredictably sparky, intemittently brilliant, and sometimes incomprehensible. His new show, Lo Real/Le Réel/The Real which had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival last night is about gypsies under Nazism and in the Holocaust, but it approaches its subject in an impressionistic, roundabout way that during the performance feels a lot more like a journey into Israel Galván's oddball consciousness than a history lesson.Of course, that is a kind Read more ...
David Nice
Drawing an audience of five and a half thousand in to listen intently is harder than pushing out into the vasts of the Albert Hall. Yet it’s what seems to work best in this unpredictable space, and last night masterful veterans Elisabeth Leonskaja and Charles Dutoit knew exactly what to do. The results were romantic introspection in Mozart - an unfashionable but valid alternative to authentic sprightliness - and a Shostakovich Fifteenth Symphony that was more skull than skin, but a compellingly decorated skull for all that.The quietly commanding tone of the evening, in marked contrast to the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Kinsey Sicks, Gilded Balloon **** The Kinsey Sicks, a four-piece drag a cappella act, were formed in 1993 and have played off-Broadway and Las Vegas; this is their UK debut. Their name is a play on Kinsey 6, the point in the scale of sexual attraction as exclusively homosexual, and they bill themselves as “Barbarella meets beautyshop”, or “chicks with shticks”.The set-up for the story is that they are taking part in a television reality show - America's Next Top Bachelor Housewife Celebrity Hoarder Makeover Star Gone Wild!, as the show title has it - where they are all girly smiles, Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
What’s it really like to be a dictator? Or president, if we put it more circumspectly, as Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf does in his new film of that name – though this President clearly believes he’s of the “for-life” variety, if not even a rung higher given that the mode of address in this contemporary court is, “Your Majesty”.In fact the plans for dynasty are well in place, as the first scene of The President nicely illustrates. Its eponymous hero (Misha Gomiashvili) is taking a break from signing death warrants to take his young grandson (Dachi Orvelashvili) over that familiar lesson Read more ...
David Kettle
It was the first major casualty of the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival. Global superstar pianist Lang Lang was stuck overseas, forbidden from flying by his doctor because of an ear infection, and therefore unable to perform Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra as planned (it had been an enticing prospect). But fear not, Lang Lang lovers – word is that he’ll be recovered in time for his solo recital of Bach, Chopin and Tchaikovsky on Friday 21 August.It was sad to see a few noticeable gaps among the Usher Hall’s seating, especially when there was an equally Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The British release of the first film made by Alejandro Jodorowsky since 1990’s The Rainbow Thief is an event. Although the Chile-born director disowned that, his reputation was secured with El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973) and consolidated with 1989’s Santa Sangre. In all, after his 1968 debut Fando y Lis, he has only completed six other films. He was born in 1929 and The Dance of Reality (La Danza de la Realidad) could, conceivably, be his last (due to age) although its follow-up, Endless Poetry, is in production.Jodorowsky was fêted by George Harrison and John Lennon. More recently Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Aisling Bea, Gilded Balloon ★★★★Aisling Bea received an Edinburgh Comedy Awards best newcomer nomination for her excellent show in 2013, and she returns with another high-energy hour of clowning about and rapid-fire delivery mixed with some astute political observation. Entitled Plan Bea, it's ostensibly about confidence and shame, although a clear theme never quite emerges.She mentions with some pride Ireland's recent vote for equal marriage, contrasting the country of her childhood when her single mother would have been better thought of had her husband died rather than left, and who used Read more ...
David Benedict
Nearly 10 years ago to the day, an almost unknown 24-year-old Venezuelan conductor came a cropper when valiantly stepping in at short notice to conduct Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony at the Proms. (His name was Gustavo Dudamel. Whatever happened to him?) To pull off successful performances of Sibelius’s seven symphonies you need not just the ability to fire up players but the intellectual grasp to grip their elusive, fluid structures.So after handing the first four symphonies in this year’s anniversary cycle to relatively young guns Thomas Dausgaard and Ilan Volkov, the BBC was taking no chances Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
What exactly do we expect when a drama opens with the declaration, “This is a true story”? The Scandalous Lady W, based on Hallie Rubenhold’s biography Lady Worsley’s Whim, brought us some unusual 18th century marriage shenanigans that ended in one of the most scandalous court cases of the era. But, despite its central legal scenes, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” wasn’t the order of the day.David Eldridge’s screenplay instead adjusted details to strengthen what would have anyway been a very acute commentary on the status of women in society, and particularly within Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tom Allen, The Stand ★★★★Tom Allen tells us Both Worlds is about being gay, watching daytime TV, doing the gardening and his "crushing sense of wasting his life". But this is no misery comedy, far from it, as Allen gives us an hour of sparkling wit, much of it aimed at himself, while slinging a few piercing arrows at deserving targets.He addresses his neuroses, recounting the time as a child he stood on the edge of the swimming pool but didn't dare dive in – a good metaphor for a life lived as an observer rather than participant. He didn't fit in at his south London school, he Read more ...
David Nice
A second night of Sibelius symphonies at the Proms, packed to the rafters just like its predecessor. Exit Thomas Dausgaard, the tuba needed for the first two symphonies but not for the Third or – surprising given its pervasive darkness – the Fourth, and the air that had billowed around supremely supple performances. Enter Ilan Volkov to bring too much dark earth and inorganic point-making at first, though the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, its strings sounding tougher if less inward from a different point in the hall, was still on world-class form.The programme was identical to the second Read more ...
David Kettle
Incoming director Fergus Linehan has assembled some of the most respected names in their fields for his first Edinburgh International Festival. For classical music, that means Anne-Sophie Mutter, Valery Gergiev and Michael Tilson Thomas (among many others); for dance it means Sylvie Guillem; and for theatre it means Simon McBurney’s Complicite and Robert Lepage.It’s a risky strategy – not to mention an expensive one – and an approach that could threaten to sideline more experimental, less starry artists whose names aren’t quite so well known. But on the strength of Lepage and his company Ex Read more ...