London
mark.kidel
As a child, Anselm Kiefer tells us, in a bombed out German city, he would play in the rubble, creating life out of ruin and destruction. As an artist who is remarkably consistent, without being predictable, he continues to play in the ruins, breathing new life into the detritus of the world as well as his own collection of found objects, waste materials and other elements from which life appears to have been sucked out by time and history.Kiefer’s latest exhibition at the White Cube Bermondsey, a space with which he’s developed an intimate relationship, is inspired by James Joyce’s Finnegans Read more ...
joe.muggs
The broken beat movement, centred on West London around the turn of the millennium, wasn’t super press friendly. Its complex rhythms were eclipsed in the populism stakes by its close cousin UK garage, and serious commentators didn’t really know what to do with a broadly working class, multicultural scene that was aspirational and privileged virtuosic production and musicianship. Indeed there was a distinct inverted snobbery in the refusal refusal to treat it with the respect afforded other electronic music which fit into a scholarly vs “street” dichotomy.The movement itself, which could Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Whether you believe that Ellen Brammar’s play, Modest, newly arrived in London from Hull Truck Theatre, succeeds or not, rather depends on your criteria for evaluating theatre. On storytelling, character development and nuance, it is two and a half hours that goes nowhere. On representation, audience appeal and addressing past injustices, well, the reaction in the house to this Middle Child and Milk Presents collaboration will confirm that the job is done.Elizabeth Thompson’s The Roll Call was the sensation of the Royal Academy’s 1874 Summer Exhibition. Owing something to Gustave Courbet and Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Can things change, or must they always stay the same? The latest history play by Jack Thorne, a man of the moment whose Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is still in the West End and whose National Theatre hit The Motive and the Cue will transfer in December, revisits the early history of the BBC to show how current tensions between public service impartiality and political expediency have a long backstory.With a title that evokes the past, When Winston Went to War with the Wireless is a lively play of ideas that sits comfortably in the Donmar Warehouse’s intimate surroundings. But is this Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Much of cricket comprises waiting – you wait on the boundary to hear news of the toss, you wait your turn to bat, you heed the call of your batting partner to wait to see if a run is on, you wait for the rain to stop. A friend once told me that he played cricket in order to make the rest of his life seem more interesting. There is something in that observation that would appeal to both principals in this play for sure.Two men bicker on the boundary as they wait their turn to bat. In at five and six, one is keeping score (and "working the telegraph", as cricket’s arcane argot has it), while Read more ...
Gary Naylor
After the pantos, the movies (epic, camp and animated) and the television series, is there anything new to be mined in the story of Robin Hood? Probably not, as this messy, misjudged show takes that hope and fires an arrow through its heart.We’re in an Albion of misty woods, mighty castles and feudal exploitation, the King weakened by poison administered by his right hand man, Sheriff Baldwyn, whose day job is brutally extracting taxes from the peasants to build a new road for the barons (Shaun Yusuf McKee, Simon Oskarsson and TJ Holmes pictured below). He doesn’t have it all his own way: Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Artist-in-Residence at the Wigmore Hall Hilary Hahn brought her residency to an end with a collaboration with the exciting Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, a notably youthful and ethnically diverse group, who brought with them a notably more youthful and ethnically diverse crowd than the hall usually entertains.The programme was American music, combining a couple of mid-20th century masterpieces with newer works by living composers. The older music largely came out ahead.Although I have known and loved the Samuel Barber String Quartet for 30 years I had never previously heard it live. I don’t Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Standing just inside the door of the Whitechapel’s downstairs gallery is a luggage trolley laden with parcels (pictured below, right). This forlorn object looks as if it’s waiting to be collected, but the owner seems to have gone AWOL.The packages are labelled, not with names and addresses but descriptions of the contents, as if they had come from a museum archive.“Bima curtain,” reads one label. “Large, dark blue velvet cloth with heavy gilt ribbon trim and gilt fringing. Condition: torn in several places, much stained, creased and damp when found.” The items were retrieved from the gutter Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Pinned eyes stare from a frozen husk of a face as a clubber comes down, cradled high over London on a window-cleaner’s perch. Director WIZ’s 18-minute video for Flowered Up’s rave epic “Weekender” (1992) takes you on the E’d up odyssey of Little Joe (Lee Whitlock), from skinning up at work through clubland peaks to chilly aftermath.This BFI release pairs this perfect marriage of music, film and moment’s 2K remaster with Chloé Raunet’s new documentary I Am Weekender. Here Jeremy Deller dubs Weekender “the first meditation on rave culture”, Lynne Ramsay, who similarly caught clubbing’s hazy Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Pretty Red Dress opens with a classic Motown-esque girl group belting out a show tune before cutting to Travis (Natey Jones) as he leaves prison. Waiting for him outside is Candice (Alexandra Burke); she’s sitting in her Audi, singing along to the radio.At home is their teenage daughter, Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun), happy enough to have her dad back in their Lambeth flat on a council estate, but facing her own problems at school with both authority and friends.Candice works as a cashier at a local supermarket but dreams of being a performer; she spots a sequin-studded, bright red mini- Read more ...
Gary Naylor
There are better musicals in town, but can you find me a more spectacular show in a more comfortable theatre? I doubt it. Not that Jonathan Church's new production at Sadler's Wells is flawless. It's a 90-year-old blockbuster so, for all its references to breadlines, insecure employment and heat-or-eat decisions, one wonders if so much effort might be better expended on something a little more recent, a little less bound by the cliches of musical theatre? And there's also Les Dennis neither dancing nor singing. Why? If you set aside such minor gripes, one can delight in a show that Read more ...
India Lewis
Small Worlds, the second novel from Caleb Azumah Nelson, is a delight: a book with a real feeling for sound and dance, and a sense of place from London to Ghana and back again. It’s a story of a first romance, the intricacies of family life, the importance of music, and the difficulties still faced by people of colour in the UK today. While it may not seem like it will set the world on fire, it’s a beautifully observed picture of the twists and turns of life and of love.Our protagonist, Stephen, is a young black trumpet player, destined for great things until he flunks his exams, forcing a Read more ...