London
Jasper Rees
One has low expectations of Great Expectations. As the Dickens bicentenary draws to a close with yet another version, young Pip must once again come to the aid of the convict Magwitch, once again be raised up from apprentice blacksmith to gentleman, once again fall for the cold, unrequiting Estella Havisham. And once again make do without the first-person narrative that gives him his character. For this latest account Mike Newell, director of Four Weddings and the fourth Harry Potter, has teamed up with scriptwriter David One Day Nicholls, so you can intuit roughly what flavours Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Cole Porter’s musical spin on Shakespeare demands the fluidity, fizz and acidity of champagne. In Trevor Nunn’s revival, which transfers to London after a successful run in Chichester, it’s more like gelato. It has sweetness, and a rich abundance of detail, but it’s also thick, cloying, and somewhat bland. There’s plenty of stagey pizzazz on display, but it too often feels strained and soulless. The production lingers when it should zing, and despite some fine song and dance, it never conjures either the sexual heat or the showbiz buzz that should set it sparkling.The show takes place on and Read more ...
howard.male
Twenty-first century rock bands have a problem, and it’s a problem that they’ve had for decades: how to stay focused on the rebel oomph of distorted guitars, rudimentary drumming, sorting-out-the-bottom-end bass guitar and – let’s face it – self-pitying, woefully inadequate but raggedly functional vocals without sounding like a relic from a bygone age? After all, if record shops still existed, most rock bands of recent years would eventually find themselves shelved under the demoralisingly dusty category of “Trad Rock”.Unfortunately, two of the bands on last night’s triple bill of up-and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Frustratingly, the ramshackle rail service from Brighton deposits me at the crammed O2 20 minutes into Robbie Williams's set. After the eerie quiet of the airport-like walkways around the perimeters, the torrid atmosphere inside the gigantic arena is a shocker. It's packed to the rafters with women shrieking and waving their arms in the air while their men sit beside them, sheepishly mouthing lyrics. Williams, clad fetchingly in black, is playing in the round in the centre of the O2's huge bowl, and the first song I catch is his recent number one single, "Candy". This frankly irritating Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Any gig is partly defined by its audience. Brighton audiences, particularly Brighton Dome audiences, are usually a lively bunch but tonight’s crowd, at least until beyond halfway through, are still as dummies in their seats, quiet as mice. Looking around is uncanny, like observing a theatre watching a Strindberg play or some such. True, they’re mostly in their fifties but that’s a poor excuse. The last time I saw the Dome this dead was when Ultravox played a couple of years back. Matters weren’t, perhaps, helped by the production company’s disgraceful insistence that the bar – which is Read more ...
Veronica Lee
You don't see much of Arthur Wing Pinero's considerable output these days. Although he was largely contemporaneous with Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert and Sullivan, whose works have stayed the course, his plays have not, with just a few exceptions. But in that weird way these things sometimes happen, it seems Pinero is undergoing something of a resurgence (in London at least), as a production of The Second Mrs Tanqueray has just finished at the Rose Theatre in Kingston and the Donmar Warehouse is to stage Trelawny of the Wells early next year.The Magistrate will be even less Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For those wont to say “that’s well dark,” at the slightest hint of edgy content, here is true darkness. The third album by London alt-folk oddballs David Cronenberg’s Wife is stewed in pitch-black lyrical themes and revels in dragging its listeners to truly uncomfortable places. If this album had been made by an artist with a higher profile, I suspect it would have been greeted by a chorus of disapproving voices from every side of the ideological spectrum.Musically, the four-piece plough a furrow not dissimilar to The Fall or LIARS, but only if both had joined forces to create a new and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
What a year for great British institutions. Sixty years of Elizabeth II, 50 years of James Bond, and a half-century of the Rolling Stones. To recycle an even older cliche, we will never see the like of any of them again.Brett Morgen's Crossfire Hurricane is a chronicle of the Stones' career, assembled from a wealth of news, documentary and home-made footage stretching back to their earliest days as a scraggy west London blues band. The commentary, other than that supplied by various interviewers and TV anchormen glimpsed across the passing decades, is provided by the Stones themselves, who Read more ...
peter.quinn
Just occasionally an artist hits the truth of the song in such spectacular fashion that it makes you feel with ever greater intensity what it means to be human. Last night, vocalist Sheila Jordan's performance of the Jimmy Webb standard, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, a song she recorded on her 1999 album Jazz Child, achieved exactly that: a shatteringly personal account, bookended by an improvisation on a native American theme, both the pathos and power of the song were extraordinary. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was wiping away tears.With a career that stretches back to the 1940s and Read more ...
peter.quinn
For the way it combined mercurial, on-the-fly interplay, seismic textural shifts and listening of the highest order, this gig was remarkable. In the space of two continuous sets there wasn't a longueur to be found, such was the incredible union of Black Top #5's boundary-pushing improv and fine-tuned musicianship.Saxophonist Steve Williamson, trumpeter Byron Wallen and vocalist Cleveland Watkiss joined Black Top founders, pianist Pat Thomas and vibist/sampler Orphy Robinson, to explore the intersection of live instruments and the technology of dub, reggae and dance floor.You would search in Read more ...
theartsdesk
When Zachary C noticed his audience were no longer beguiled by his best Zachary B smile, he arranged for his chargrilled-sweetcorn teeth to be replaced by a mouthful of ultraviolet-sensitive acrylic. Much to his delight, shop windows, car windscreens – even a puddle he awkwardly traversed on the way to the gig – all threw back at him a grin of searchlight intensity.On arriving at the Kings Theatre, Portsmouth, he found Fountain – his backing vocalist wife – immersed in her own reflection in the dressing room mirror. He sat down beside her and grinned his new grin.“Perfect,” he said to both Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There must be a way out of their Hackney council estate life for brothers Rashid (James Floyd, very sharp on screen here) and Mo (non-professional Fady Elsayed), whose claustrophic home life lived (more or less) to traditional parental rules, contrasts with the energy of the streets outside, where drug-dealing is the most lucrative occupation and there’s always a hint of violence in the air.One of the many achievements of Sally El Hosaini’s debut feature, winner of a clutch of festival prizes, most recently Best British Newcomer at the London Film Festival, is to nicely confound our Read more ...