England
Jerusalem, Apollo Theatre review - Mark Rylance blazes in this astonishing revivalSaturday, 30 April 2022
At long last, the giant has come back. Over a decade after its critical apotheosis on both sides of the Atlantic, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem returns to London in an astonishing revival starring Mark Rylance as the high priest of its proceedings.... Read more... |
Life After Life, BBC Two review - déjà vu all over againWednesday, 27 April 2022
If we could keep living our life over and over again, would we get better at it? This is the premise underpinning Life After Life, the BBC’s four-part adaptation of Kate Atkinson’s novel.The story centres around Ursula Todd, as she grows up with... Read more... |
Lava, Soho Theatre review - silences, secrets and liesFriday, 22 April 2022
The title of James Fritz’s play is allusive, oblique even. I assume it refers to how, in the aftermath of a catastrophe such as an erupting volcano, it’s the lava that spreads outwards, changing the form of the surrounding landscape. It’s not the... 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... |
First Person: playwright Chinonyerem Odimba on birthing her potent and timely new showWednesday, 30 March 2022
People often ask how long a play takes to make its way out of you. And it’s always a valid question because no matter how beautiful, soft, joyful, or short a play is, there is a wrestling match that takes place between the idea lodging itself... Read more... |
Peter Grimes, Royal Opera review - impressive, not quite devastatingFriday, 18 March 2022
"Why does he have to sentimentalise this piece?", Britten is reported by former Royal Opera director John Tooley to have said of Jon Vickers as Peter Grimes the tormented fisherman, so very different from the composer's life partner and creator of... Read more... |
The Phantom of the Open review - charmingly incompetent golfer channels EalingThursday, 17 March 2022
“No one can say you didn’t try,” shipyard worker Maurice Flitcroft (Mark Rylance) is told, shortly before bluffing his way aged 46 into the 1976 British Open, having never played golf before. The British love of the underdog is our popular cinema’s... Read more... |
Album: Peter Doherty & Frédéric Lo - The Fantasy Life Of Poetry & CrimeThursday, 17 March 2022
Pete Doherty became a hunted man as he was falling apart, lent tabloid notoriety by his dissolute romance with Kate Moss. The Libertines were based on more solid ground at first - rickety ideals of old England and intimate rock’n’roll community with... Read more... |
Our Generation, National Theatre review - Alecky Blythe captures the world of teenagers todaySaturday, 12 March 2022
Do you happily binge four hours of mind-candy TV in one sitting? Alecky Blythe’s latest verbatim play, Our Generation – which runs for 3hr 45min at the Dorfman space of the National Theatre – might take almost as long but will probably be much more... Read more... |
A Banquet review – horror, done beforeFriday, 11 March 2022
One feels, or perhaps hopes, that if she could have avoided it, first-time feature director Ruth Paxton might not have started A Banquet as she ultimately did: with Holly Hughes (Sienna Guillory) arduously scrubbing the frame of her... Read more... |
Small Island, National Theatre review - visually ravishing tale with an epic sweepMonday, 07 March 2022
With its violent storms, bombed out cities and stories of families ripped apart by war, Small Island feels very much like a play for our times. From its stunning opening, in which the frantic silhouettes of humans are interwoven with black-and-white... Read more... |
Salley Vickers: The Gardener review - nature has other ideasTuesday, 01 March 2022
A garden is a space defined by its limits. Whatever its contents in terms of style and species, and however manicured or apparently wild its appearance, what distinguishes a garden from its equivalent quantity of uncultivated land is its enclosure... Read more... |
