Reviews
The Girl of the Golden West, Opera NorthWednesday, 22 January 2014
Puccini’s unlikely Spaghetti Western still convinces in Aletta Collins’ vivid new production. The incongruities in this uneven yet powerful work aren’t dodged but embraced. Most of them are musical: the sheer delight, for instance, of seeing stage... Read more... |
August: Osage CountyWednesday, 22 January 2014
Anything planned as Oscar-bait never works – although the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that underpins the film August: Osage County has a pedigree to please the Academy. By some accounts, it began with a lunch between Harvey Weinstein and Emmy-... Read more... |
Big Brother Watching Me: Citizen Ai Weiwei, BBC FourTuesday, 21 January 2014
For a film that opened with Ai Weiwei’s statement, “Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one,” there was an irony in the fact that Andreas Johnsen’s Big Brother Watching Me… started practically without words. When the... Read more... |
Zhenya Strigalev's Smiling Organizm, Ronnie Scott'sTuesday, 21 January 2014
The musical concept behind this constellation of international stars at Ronnie Scott’s last night was simple. Take a sextet of some of the world’s finest improvising jazz musicians, give them either a funky groove, gentle swing or a bass-fired post-... Read more... |
Jeremy Deller: English Magic, William Morris GalleryTuesday, 21 January 2014
As you may recall, Jeremy Deller represented Britain at last year’s Venice Biennale and a distilled version of English Magic, his British Pavilion show, is now installed in the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. It's an especially relevant first... Read more... |
The General (1926)Tuesday, 21 January 2014
It's no discredit to Sandra Bullock and George Clooney that they didn't venture into outer space when filming Gravity – setting aside other considerations, the insurance costs would have been prohibitive. There is little doubt, however, that had... Read more... |
TeenageTuesday, 21 January 2014
Once open a time, all children would have blossomed into adults. Or, at least, have entered the adult world immediately after childhood. There was no intermediate stage. Then, in the 1950s, teenage was acknowledged as a distinct phase. Neither child... Read more... |
Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards 2014, KokoMonday, 20 January 2014
In a world where everyone is expected to be a “brand”, Gilles Peterson sets some very interesting precedents. Probably best known as a radio DJ – currently on BBC 6 Music, plus his globally syndicated Worldwide show – he also remains as in demand to... Read more... |
The Pass, Royal Court Jerwood Theatre UpstairsMonday, 20 January 2014
You don't have to know the difference between Dennis Wise (who is referenced during it) and Ernie Wise (who is not) to be immensely gripped by The Pass, the scorching new Royal Court play that traffics ostensibly in the world of football only to... Read more... |
Mr Selfridge, Series 2, ITVSunday, 19 January 2014
We return to the dramatised Selfridges five years after the opening of the store that changed the face of British shopping - and yet, despite proving those who doomed his enterprise to failure wrong, the smile on its eponymous owner’s face is as... Read more... |
The Musketeers, BBC OneSunday, 19 January 2014
It’s costume drama meets adventure story, it’s got smouldering manhood and heaving-bosomed women with sex, swordfights, politicking and even beautifully lit Prague doubling for 17th-century Paris, but the question hanging over the BBC’s lavish new... Read more... |
Call the Midwife, Series 3, BBC OneSunday, 19 January 2014
If it ain't broke don't fix it, and writer Heidi Thomas obviously has no intention of tinkering with the Call the Midwife formula. Virtually nothing has changed, except that there's a new character, Sister Winifred, while Chummy (Miranda Hart) is... Read more... |
