America
Death of a Salesman, Noël Coward TheatreThursday, 14 May 2015![]() We’ve not been short of memorable London productions of Arthur Miller’s best known works. Ivo van Hove’s triple Olivier award-winning A View from the Bridge, which transferred to the Wyndham’s Theatre from the Young Vic earlier this year, and the... Read more... |
The Affair, Sky AtlanticThursday, 14 May 2015![]() Already a couple of Golden Globes to the good after debuting in the States last year, The Affair effortlessly hit its stride as it landed in Blighty. This opening double episode began generating a subtle miasma of intrigue and vague menace from the... Read more... |
The Apple Family Plays, Brighton DomeWednesday, 06 May 2015![]() "I hear America singing," wrote Walt Whitman, the American poet whose language playwright Richard Nelson has co-opted for the title of the second (Sweet and Sad) of his remarkable quartet of Apple Family Plays. And those wanting to know what song is... Read more... |
Empire, E4Wednesday, 29 April 2015![]() What Nashville did for country music, Empire may very well be about to do for the lurid world of hip hop. If not more so. Created by Lee Daniels (director of Precious) and written by Danny Hunger Games Strong, it's about ailing music mogul Lucious... Read more... |
American Buffalo, Wyndham's TheatreTuesday, 28 April 2015![]() From the great, gasp-inducing rush of colour when the curtain opens on American Buffalo to the embrace that closes it, this revival of David Mamet’s career-making rummage through the junkyard of the American Dream has you in a vice-like grip. It’s... Read more... |
Ah, Wilderness!, Young VicWednesday, 22 April 2015![]() Coming-of-age comedy, moonlit romance and a gentle folk soul: can this really be Eugene O’Neill? The master of darkness makes a surprising departure with semi-autobiographical 1933 work Ah, Wilderness!, which visits staple tropes – addiction, family... Read more... |
Gypsy, Savoy TheatreThursday, 16 April 2015![]() Vaudeville is alive and well in the silvered Lilliputian cave which might have been made for it (not that Victorian Savoyards could have had any inkling). If you find yourself, like last night’s showbiz audience, beguiled to cheering point by the... Read more... |
The SalvationWednesday, 15 April 2015![]() Boasting one of the most appealingly eclectic casts in recent memory, The Salvation – from Dogme 95 director Kristian Levring – might have hoped to emulate the success of Sergio Leone's Italian-infused approach by bringing a Danish flavour... Read more... |
Lost RiverWednesday, 08 April 2015![]() Ryan Gosling throws a lot at his first film as director but Lost River is a sign he has found a single discipline which can accommodate many of his scattershot tendencies. He does not, though, find a place for his own musical output in the avowedly... Read more... |
Oppenheimer, RSC, Vaudeville TheatreWednesday, 01 April 2015![]() “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” J Robert Oppenheimer’s quotation from Hindu scripture is often used to signify the scientist’s rueful realisation, when it was too late, of what he had created in delivering an atomic bomb to the US... Read more... |
Battlefield: HardlineFriday, 27 March 2015![]() The Battlefield series is probably the key rival to Call Of Duty for first-person shooters. Whereas the various Call Of Duty strands tend toward epic, over-the-top Hollywood single-player action and frantic multi-player, Battlefield was born of... Read more... |
Hillary Clinton: The Power of Women, BBC TwoThursday, 26 March 2015![]() If the mark of a good documentary is that it teaches you something new, then the awkwardly titled Hillary Clinton: The Power of Women was a very good documentary indeed. For instance, before watching it I had no idea that the famous “women’s rights... Read more... |
