America
The Staircase, NOW review - addictive dramatisation of real-life murder investigationFriday, 13 May 2022
The real-life case of Michael Peterson and the death of his wife Kathleen in 2001 has generated a steady stream of TV documentaries, though this new series from HBO Max (showing on NOW) is the first time anybody has actually dramatised the story.... Read more... |
Everything Everywhere All at Once review - brace yourselfFriday, 13 May 2022
Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of those films that are guaranteed to make an audience feel their age. Unless you’re steeped in the multiverse genre (The Matrix films, the Marvel canon, etc.) and are comfortable with... Read more... |
Oklahoma!, Young Vic review - a stunning, stripped-down version of the classic musicalSaturday, 07 May 2022
No surreys, fringes or corny chap-slapping: the Rodgers and Hammerstein revival that has arrived at the Young Vic from New York, trailing a Tony award, is no ordinary makeover. Daniel Fish, its director, has spent the best part of 15 years stripping... Read more... |
Doctor Strange in The Multiverse Of Madness – not strange, not madFriday, 06 May 2022
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is at its most radical and corporate here; maybe decadent is the word. We start with surgeon turned sorcerer Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) threatened then slaughtered in a cosmic chase sequence. It’s just a... Read more... |
Kožená, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - Berlin to Broadway, and backSaturday, 30 April 2022
As Walter Huston croaked in 1938, it’s a long, long while from May to December. And Kurt Weill – who wrote his evergreen “September Song” for Huston in that year – spanned several musical epochs within not so many years as he travelled from the... Read more... |
First Person: playwright Naomi Wallace on finally hearing her work performed in EnglishSaturday, 23 April 2022
The Breach is a coming of age story and an age-in-the-making story. The play takes place in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1990s, switching back and forth between teenagers in Louisville and their older selves 15 years later. The promise of the... Read more... |
Bonnie & Clyde, Arts Theatre review - great songs, but plot fires too many blanksThursday, 21 April 2022
One of the more irritating memes (it’s a competitive field, I know) is the “Name a more iconic couple” appearing over a photo of Posh and Becks, or Harry and Megan, or Leo and whoever. I’ve always been tempted to close the discussion down with a... Read more... |
Wolf Cub, Hampstead Downstairs review - haunting solo play about the American nightmareThursday, 14 April 2022
Ché Walker claims he wrote Wolf Cub, now in the Hampstead Downstairs studio space, in a two-day blitz prompted by Donald Trump’s election win in 2016. He was working in Atlanta at the time, the home city of Claire Latham, the solo performer for... Read more... |
Album: Camila Cabello - FamiliaSaturday, 09 April 2022
The global popularity of Latin music in the past few years is almost incomprehensibly huge. 2017’s “Despacito” by Puerto Rican Luis Fonsi was the point where it became clear that Latin America – like South Korea – was now operating entirely on its... Read more... |
Album: Jack White - Fear Of The DawnFriday, 08 April 2022
Jack White is still unsatisfied, and rock’n’roll still unfinished business for its most extremist exponent. His last pre-pandemic album, Boarding House Reach (2018), seemed a major blow to his career, its experiment in warped dynamics and Beat... Read more... |
The Fever Syndrome, Hampstead Theatre review - ambitious family drama falls shortWednesday, 06 April 2022
The Fever Syndrome has an ambition that places itself firmly in the tradition of the great American family drama (comparisons with Arthur Miller feel the most appropriate), a piece in which the reassessment of ties of blood is played out against a... Read more... |
Thatcher & Reagan: A Very Special Relationship, BBC Two review - when the Iron Lady met the Cowboy PresidentMonday, 04 April 2022
This two-part documentary about how the Eighties were partly shaped by the British Prime Minister and the US President was obviously planned long before the Russians invaded Ukraine, but it’s a powerful illustration of how history doesn’t stop, but... Read more... |
