Reviews
David Nice
Ibsen cast a cruel eye on the characters of his most relentlessly symbolic play – wild ducks wounded or domesticated by fate or character. They speak or behave unsympathetically, for the most part, yet the actors must make us care for them. Simon Stone and Chris Ryan sidestep the problem by not only updating the action but writing their own script on the subject, reinventing some of the motivations while keeping the essence. True to some of Ibsen’s main points it may not be, but this is heartbreaking drama, so truthfully acted it would make a stone weep.Most of the key situations remain. Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Is there an ideal way to programme Metamorphosen? Richard Strauss’s elegiac masterpiece requires 23 solo strings. That’s more than most chamber orchestras can muster, but with a full size symphony orchestra the piece leaves most of the players with nothing to do. In this Usher Hall concert the Royal Scottish National Orchestra chose to let Metamorphosen stand in glorious isolation before the interval. Those players that could opted to stand – not an option for the lower strings – in a tight semicircle round principal guest conductor Thomas Søndergård, with the rest of the orchestra’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Partitas 1-6 Igor Levit (piano) (Sony)Martin Geck's sleeve essay accompanying this pair of discs is a good read, hinting at the subtleties and complexities lying just below the surface of what may, superficially, look like six simple suites of dance movements. Bach's title page for the first Partita describes it as music "for keyboard practice... composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirits". Geck quotes from a letter about Bach written by Schumann in 1840: “I confess my sins to this lofty figure every day, while seeking to purify and strengthen myself through him... I'm Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Gaga’s relationship with her fanbase, her “Little Monsters”, is quite a thing. I’ve not seen the O2 so permanently on its feet. Large swathes of her capacity crowd are up and dancing right from the opening number. They adore her and are dressed to show it, from middle-aged ladies to gay men to teenage girls to many multitudes of humanity in between.They couldn’t care less that her third album, Artpop, was lackustre compared to its predecessors and her set, which includes most of it, certainly supports that perspective. It sounds a lot more rip-roaring fun than it did on the home stereo. The Read more ...
Guy Oddy
John Cooper Clarke has assumed many roles since he came motoring out of Salford in the mid Seventies, spitting out poetry from a distinctly untraditional view point. There were tales of how you’d never see a nipple in the Daily Express (“This paper’s boring mindless mean, full of pornography, the kind that’s clean”) and marrying a monster from outer space (“We walked out tentacle in hand. You could sense that the Earthlings would not understand”) and then there was hair, sun glasses and tight suit, which gave him an air of mid-1960s Bob Dylan. Since then, there’s been heroin addiction (now Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
It takes a brave man to programme a single performance of Berg’s Wozzeck on a damp Thursday evening in Glasgow. But Donald Runnicles is such a man. In his five years at the helm of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra he has proved adept at making the implausible possible, and turning the ordinary into something extraordinary. With the BBC in support, and its renewed commitment to recording and broadcasting from all corners of the UK, Runnicles (pictured in rehearsal below) is maybe not so much brave as canny – he has a showman’s eye for a concert programme that will challenge and entertain; Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Another October and another Frieze week just passed. This means the biggest of big hitters have been turning up in London. The economic quantifiers aren’t precise, but there have been plenty of estimates. Hordes of well-heeled visitors mean big profits for hotels, restaurants, shops and transport. All the people employed to literally make the fair, and the huge cluster of shows, events and happenings which take place because of Frieze, from auctions to ancillary fairs, mean conservative estimates are now hovering around £50m+ for the London economy. And no, that’s not for art sales but all Read more ...
Marianka Swain
When gifting the unheard a voice, the temptation is often to make it a solemn one. Thankfully, Paddy Campbell has, for the most part, sidestepped puritanical preaching in his debut play based on experiences working at a ‘wet house’, a homeless hostel where incurable alcoholics can drink in a secure environment. Though tonally uneven, at its best Campbell’s piece delivers unpalatable truths with a bitingly funny sweetener.Wet House, developed with Newcastle’s Live Theatre, introduces naïve new recruit Andy (Riley Jones, pictured right with Chris Connel) to the bleak environs of Crabtree House Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Mash-ups, genre-bending and creative anachronism can be a fun way to inject life into a stale idea. Pirates meet ninjas, Victorian engineers find themselves constructing steam dirigibles and aetheric ray guns and zombies somehow find their way into space.With Card Dungeon, developer Playtap Games has combined not two clichéd settings, but three different takes on ways to play in the same clichéd setting. Card Dungeon is a curious hybrid of roguelike dungeon quest, tabletop role playing game and card battler. You are The Crusader, a brave knight who seeks to defeat the source of evil Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It's throwback week on the West End, with two very different shows recalling the darkest days of America's racial disharmony. But whereas The Scottsboro Boys shocks and satirises and has us choke on our own laughter, Memphis is content to be the feel-good flipside. Throw a few home truths and some grit into the mix – disturbing but not too real – keep it predictable and sentimental, even a little patronising, and you ensure that everybody is dancing in the aisles and feeling good about themselves at the close.This 2010 Broadway Tony-winner is a bit like Hairspray but without the wit and self- Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
The Jimi Hendrix redux directed by John Ridley, Oscar-winning scriptwriter of 12 Years A Slave (and the underrated Undercover Brother, among others), was highly anticipated - especially as this take on the great guitarist’s life would not, apparently, feature any hits.Although this sounded like a deliberate plan, one suspects Ridley was hampered by a perennial film budgeting problem: soundtracks cost a lot. So, no greatest hits but snippets of covers work perfectly well to tell the story of Jimi’s breakthrough year 1966-67 – with Jimi well portrayed by the telegenic, talented and relaxed Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Mother love is mangled, yanked inside-out and tested almost to destruction in Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s heartfelt horror debut. The Babadook enthusiastically fulfils its remit to scare, but finds its fright in the secret corners of maternal instinct, where frustration, grief and violence meet.Amelia (Essie Davis) is the mother of 6-year-old Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who was born hours after her husband died in a car crash, speeding to the hospital as she went into labour. The matrix of guilt and mourning from that trauma still defines Amelia and Samuel’s relationship. She looks Read more ...