Reviews
Marx in London, Scottish Opera review - the humour of history made manifestFriday, 23 February 2024
An opera about a day in the life of Karl Marx doesn’t exactly sound like a barrel of laughs. But then so much of Jonathan Dove’s witty 2018 work proves that things are not always what they seem, whether that’s through Dove’s jaunty score-writing,... Read more... |
Hir, Park Theatre review - incendiary production for Taylor Mac's rich absurdist family dramaFriday, 23 February 2024
In 2017, two years after Hir premiered, Taylor Mac was awarded a “Genius Grant” and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for drama. The new production of Hir at the Park demonstrates why. It’s a rich, provocative piece about the ideas that drive us now,... Read more... |
Memory review - love, dementia and truthFriday, 23 February 2024
Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is given a new lease on life in Mexican director Michel Franco’s moving, complex film, full of fine performances.Saul (a wonderful Peter Sarsgaard), who has early-onset dementia, plays the song constantly. It’... Read more... |
Samuel Takes a Break... in Male Dungeon No. 5 after a long but generally successful day of tours, The Yard Theatre review - funny and thought-provokingFriday, 23 February 2024
You do not need to be Einstein to feel it. If the only dimension missing is time, 75% of a place’s identity can invade your very being, hollow you out, replace your soul with a void. It happened to me at Auschwitz and it’s happening to Samuel at... Read more... |
King Lear, Almeida Theatre review - Danny Sapani dazzles in this spartan tragedyThursday, 22 February 2024
Less than three years after her magnificent Macbeth, Yaël Farber returns to the Almeida with another Shakespeare tragedy. Her take on King Lear (main picture) offers a full-bodied, slow-burn version of this devastating drama, where Danny Sapani... Read more... |
Bill Bailey: Thoughtifier, Brighton Centre review - offbeat adventures with a whirling, erudite mindThursday, 22 February 2024
I first saw Bill Bailey at least 30 years ago in the cabaret tent at Glastonbury Festival, the audience lying on hessian matting, a fug of hash smoke in the air. He seemed one of us, a bug-eyed, Tolkien-prog hippy with a stoned sense of humour and... Read more... |
Hadestown, Lyric Theatre review - soul-stirring musical gloriously revamps classical mythsThursday, 22 February 2024
Doom and gloom, we are told, may have abounded in the classical underworld, but Hadestown suggests otherwise. Returning to London five years after its run at the National Theatre, this time with a slew of Tony Awards, this bracing musical... Read more... |
Tom Chatfield: Wise Animals review - on the changing worldThursday, 22 February 2024
Consider a chimp peeling a stick which it will poke into a termite nest. It strikes us as a human gesture. Our primate cousin is fashioning a tool. Just as important, the peeled stick implies a narrative. Chimp is hungry, will deploy this neat aid... Read more... |
An Enemy of the People, Duke of York's Theatre - performative and predictableWednesday, 21 February 2024
Real life is a helluva lot scarier right now than you might guess from the performative theatrics on display in the new West End version of An Enemy of the People, which updates Ibsen's 1882 play to our vexatious modern day.Matt Smith is in... Read more... |
Double Feature, Hampstead Theatre review - with directors like these, who needs enemiesWednesday, 21 February 2024
It’s awards season in the film world, which means that we’re currently swamped by hyperbolic shows of love and respect – actors and their directors gushing about how each could simply never have reached their creative heights without the other. Of... Read more... |
Zineb Sedira: Dreams Have No Titles, Whitechapel Gallery review - a disorientating mix of fact and fictionWednesday, 21 February 2024
The downstairs of the Whitechapel Gallery has been converted into a ballroom or, rather, a film set of a ballroom. From time to time, a couple glides briefly across the floor, dancing a perfunctory tango. And they are really hamming it up, not for... Read more... |
The Way, BBC One review - steeltown bluesTuesday, 20 February 2024
This three-part drama arrives trailing clouds of big-byline glory. Michael Sheen directed and produced it (as well as making fleeting appearances on screen), James Graham wrote it and documentary-maker Adam Curtis co-produced it.But what is it? Part... Read more... |
