America
Big the Musical, Dominion Theatre review - sweet if wildly overstretchedWednesday, 18 September 2019
The work isn't finished on Big, if this stage musical of the beloved 1988 Tom Hanks film is ever to, um, make it big. A Broadway flop in 1996 where it was among the last shows directed by the late, much-admired Englishman Mike Ockrent, the material... Read more... |
CD: Mudhoney - Morning in AmericaSaturday, 14 September 2019
Mudhoney’s new album Morning in America is a strange beast. Made up of outtakes from last year’s Digital Garbage, a cover version and rerecorded versions of limited edition 7” singles, one look at the track listing suggests a second CD that might... Read more... |
Alvin Ailey, Programme C review - black, beautiful, brilliantThursday, 12 September 2019
The Ailey company is that rare thing – a dance legend that’s even better than you remember. While no one forgets their first encounter with America’s No.1 touring troupe and its unique mix of ballet, modern, jazz, street, and all-round athletic... Read more... |
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Sadler's Wells review - Still more RevelationsFriday, 06 September 2019
There is no equivalent of the Ailey phenomenon. This is a modern dance company with a New York square named after it. It’s a dance company that has performed at the inauguration of two presidents. Its calling card, Revelations, a suite of dances... Read more... |
Falsettos, The Other Palace review - affecting search for the new normalFriday, 06 September 2019
William Finn and James Lapine’s musical – which combines two linked one-acts, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, set in late 1970s/early 1980s New York – picked up Tony Awards in 1992 for its book and score, and was nominated again in... Read more... |
A Million Little Pieces review - addict's anaemic redemptionSunday, 01 September 2019
The high, crackhead days of James Frey (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are over in five adrenalized minutes, as he dances naked to the Smashing Pumpkins, then tumbles insensibly backwards from a ledge. Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of Frey’s... Read more... |
The Informer review - tough but tin-eared B-movieThursday, 29 August 2019
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) wouldn’t have any luck at all. Being an Iraq special forces veteran jailed for protecting his wife in a bar fight seems wretched karma enough. Released as an undercover informant on the Polish... Read more... |
Martha Reeves and The Vandellas, Dingwalls review - What's going on? Good questionTuesday, 27 August 2019
There’s something truly sad and dispiriting about listening to an artist trash their back catalogue and absolutely totally ruin their greatest song, especially when that song has acquired anthemic status and been chosen to be preserved by the... Read more... |
Karl Marlantes: Deep River review - growing pains of a nation of immigrantsSunday, 25 August 2019
Karl Marlantes’s Deep River is an all-American novel. And why should it not be? Marlantes is an all-American author. He grew up in small-town Oregon, attended Yale (and Oxford), fought and was heavily awarded as a Marine in Vietnam, then settled... Read more... |
Hail Satan? review - the detail of the devilSaturday, 24 August 2019
As Penny Lane’s documentary shows, America and Satanism have a long history. From the Salem Witch trials to the moral panic triggered by the Manson murders and films like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist in the 1970s, mass panic in America of the... Read more... |
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark review - mild-mannered nightmaresSaturday, 24 August 2019
Guillermo del Toro considered directing this adaptation of Alvin Schwartz’s bestselling campfire tales, and his sensibility can still be discerned in its kind sort of fantasy and concern with outsiders. He finally settled for producing, and turning... Read more... |
Appropriate, Donmar Warehouse review - fraught family reunion blisteringly toldFriday, 23 August 2019
You can’t fail to feel the ghosts in Appropriate at the Donmar Warehouse: they are there in the very timbers of the ancient Southern plantation house that is the setting for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s fraught – and often very funny – family... Read more... |
