England
First Person: Tim Etchells on 40 years of making a noise with Forced EntertainmentThursday, 10 October 2024
Forced Entertainment is a theatre company based in Sheffield, touring original performances around the world. The core group of 6 artists has been working together for 40 years, often inviting others to collaborate on particular projects. From the... Read more... |
Portraits of Dangerous Women review - quirky indie comedyThursday, 10 October 2024
“I like laws and rules,” Steph (Jeany Spark), a jaded primary school teacher, tells a pet-shop employee – she’s adopting a cat, though that venture is doomed to failure - defensively. “They’re what separate us from the monkeys and chaos.”In... Read more... |
Bellringers, Hampstead Theatre review - mordant comedy about the end of the worldWednesday, 09 October 2024
As hurricanes rip into the American Gulf states with increasing ferocity, Eastern Europe disappears underwater and even the gentle British rain becomes a deluge, the arrival of Daisy Hall’s debut play Bellringers at Hampstead Theatre’s Downstairs... Read more... |
Angry and Young, Almeida Theatre review - vigorous and illuminating double billMonday, 07 October 2024
Why should we not look back in anger? With the Oasis reunion tour in the news recently, the title of John Osborne’s seminal kitchen-sink drama – which kicked off the whole cultural phenomenon of the Angry Young Men on its first staging in 1956 – has... Read more... |
The Old Man and the Land review - dark secrets of a farming familyThursday, 03 October 2024
The Old Man and the Land depicts a worn-out sheep farmer going about his dreary business as the seasons pass, darkly and dankly. He does it because he’s always done it, and because he doesn’t trust his 42-year-old daughter, Laura, despite her... Read more... |
Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning review - riding the waveWednesday, 02 October 2024
Last year, Wendy Cope’s poem, "The Orange", went viral on TikTok. I’m not totally certain how a poem goes viral, but it did – and there’s nothing we can do about it.In fact, Faber & Faber actively did something about it and released a selection... Read more... |
A Very Royal Scandal, Prime Video review - a fairly sound reimagining, but to what end?Saturday, 21 September 2024
Why do production companies think the world needs yet another reconstituted TV drama involving famous people in infamous situations? Newspapers and non fiction books already do a great job of telling these stories of intrigue and scandal: why is a... Read more... |
Firebrand review - surviving Henry VIIIFriday, 06 September 2024
Life in Tudor times is a gift that keeps giving to film and TV people, even if the history has to be bent a little for things to make sense to contemporary audiences – Elizabeth (1998) and A Man for All Seasons (1966) being two of the more... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Laurel and Hardy - The Silent YearsTuesday, 03 September 2024
Though among the most successful film comedians of the early sound era, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s cinematic partnership had actually started in the early 1920s. It’s easy to overlook their silent short films, 15 of which are collected here.The... Read more... |
Medicine Festival review - sound and music healing in the depths of BerkshireFriday, 23 August 2024
I had been softened up for the Medicine Festival by a recent visit to the global music extravaganza WOMAD – a trio of us met a guy called Paul aka SpriITman – an ex-IT expert who after a health crisis realised he was a healer. Bear with me on this.... Read more... |
The Birthday Party, Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath review - Pinter still packs a punchSaturday, 17 August 2024
Before a word is spoken, a pause held, we hear the seagulls squawking outside, see the (let’s say brown) walls that remind you of the H-Block protests of the 1980s, witness the pitifully small portions for breakfast. If you were in any doubt that we... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Jaminaround 2024 - preview of the unique Dorset venue's second editionFriday, 16 August 2024
We’re in deepest Dorset, on the edge of the village of Cranborne. The sun has just set. A cluster of thatched rooves, ancient looking barns and outhouses.It could be a set for Game of Thrones, a reconstruction of pre-industrial times. Groups of... Read more... |
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