Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Dory Langdon: My Heart is a HunterAs a singer-songwriter, Dory Previn’s reputation rests on the extraordinary quartet of albums she made for United Artists in the opening years of the Seventies. This, her debut album, was issued in 1958. Commenting on his reaction to hearing “The Lady With The Braid” from 1971’s Mythical Kings & Iguanas for the first time, Jarvis Cocker said “I remember very vividly first hearing this record. I had moved to London. I was living in this squat and I was trying to put a curtain rail up. I was listening to the radio and it’s one of those moments where Read more ...
Nick Hasted
It’s hard to believe your eyes when you see a film now actually exists in which Stallone meets De Niro in the boxing ring. It’s Rocky v Raging Bull, of course, a fantasy match-up no one sane ever fantasised about. It sounds like the result of a Hollywood pitch meeting gone mad, stunt casting of imperial chutzpah.But here they really are: Stallone, the Orson Welles of action, whose career has been a constant disappointment since the heartfelt brilliance and nerve of writing Rocky and insisting he star in it; and De Niro, an enigmatic, exacting genius for 10 years who, tired, came back to earth Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
Barely a month of 2014 has passed, and yet already the opportunities to remember the First World War seem to be presenting themselves at every turn. In this trio of short plays, we get a more unusual treatment of the anniversary – as the overall title suggests, the purpose is to hear the voices that don't sound so loudly across the intervening hundred years. We are here to understand what the women did in the war.The first of the three plays, Luck of War by Gwen John, presents a scenario that must have occurred far more frequently than official histories record. Ann Hemingway, played Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
"Be careful what you wish for," fairy tales teach us. After I wished in December for more bite in Scottish Ballet’s saccharine Hansel and Gretel, along comes this revival of Liam Scarlett’s 2013 version of the same story for the Royal Ballet. Depicting as it does child neglect, domestic violence, paedophilia, murder, psychosis and suicide, Scarlett’s Hansel and Gretel has bite all right.Dark is an understatement here, in the black cavernous underground space of the Linbury Studio Theatre. Jon Bausor’s highly effective set bisects the stalls, bringing the audience right into Hansel and Gretel’ Read more ...
graham.rickson
Holst: The Hymn of Jesus, Delius: Sea Drift, Cynara Roderick Williams (baritone), Hallé Choir, Hallé Youth Choir, Hallé Orchestra/Sir Mark Elder (Hallé)Surprising musical effects are often achieved with relatively simple means. Holst's Hymn of Jesus contains several striking moments. Such as the bold modulation during the full chorus's “Glory to Thee, Father!” at the beginning of the second part. It could suggest a novice composer fiddling aimlessly with a sequence of unrelated major triads, but here it'll have the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. Holst's ecstatic setting of Read more ...
Andy Plaice
Such is the level of confidence that the Silent Witness producers have in their new ensemble that star turn Emilia Fox barely lifted a scalpel in the latest instalment of the BBC’s long-running crime series. Either that or she needed a night or two off, and who could blame her? It's now in its 17th series, and Fox has stuck it out for more than half of them. And with four dead bodies to look at this week, it’s a high pressure job that you’re just bound to take home with you.So step forward the other lot: new guy Thomas Chamberlain (Richard Lintern), research whiz Clarissa Mullery (Liz Carr Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Anyone familiar with Mark Kermode’s reviewing will already have heard his adulation of Steve McQueen’s latest film, 12 Years a Slave. An edition of The Culture Show dedicated to McQueen’s career could, then, have gone a bit weak at the knees in veneration. Instead, it roamed freely, making many intelligent connections across McQueen’s restless artistic journey from Turner Prize-winning video artist to hotly tipped Oscar shoo-in.That’s just one of the very many ways in which McQueen breaks new ground, in what’s becoming a really remarkable career. Rather than letting his artistic success Read more ...
philip radcliffe
There are occasions when just one band isn’t enough. Hence the rare experience of the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic joining forces for a performance, in the Strauss’s Voice series celebrating the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, of An Alpine Symphony under Juanjo Mena. With around 130 players at his command, on stage and off, along with wind and thunder machines, xylophone, castanets, cowbells and other paraphernalia, Mena had the palette for vividly bringing out all the richness of the orchestral colour.Since this was Strauss’s last tone-poem, 15 years in the making since a day Read more ...
james.woodall
Sam Mendes thinks King Lear is a bigger play than it is. In a new staging he directs at the National Theatre, he wants it to be about a convulsion of nations, a reordering of borders, bombing populations. When Lear arrives to carve his kingdom into three - entirely in his own self-interest, not his daughters’ (in the play) - over 30 soldiers are stood to attention rear stage. The illusion suggests 300 and proposes that this is a ruler whose every command is enforced by the mere shouldering of hundreds of guns. Shakespeare’s Lear is in charge, or his “authority” (as Kent states), is. No one Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The best thing about Warpaint is their rhythm section. The all-female LA quartet have received critical plaudits for both their albums, wisely releasing their latest eponymous collection in the dead zone of January, maximizing media attention (why don’t more bands do this? It was the making of the Scissor Sisters back in 2004). The foursome are determinedly un-showbiz, letting their music do the talking and dealing in tasty power-femme sound-bites. In this they are admirable but their music, a woozy amalgam of the Cocteau Twins and grunge, lacks actual songs (although there are three catchy Read more ...
peter.quinn
Featuring two of the most celebrated bands in traditional Irish music, this mouth-watering double bill as part of the ninth Temple Bar TradFest drew a capacity crowd to St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. With incredibly tight tune playing, pinpoint phrasing and a powerhouse backing section, Frankie Gavin & De Dannan kicked things off in dramatic fashion. By the time fiddle player Gavin launched into “The Wild Irishman”, his impressive bow work was sending clouds of rosin flying off in all directions. The second set of tunes, three barndances (including the great “Lucy Farr's”) plus another Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
For lovers of PS2-era games, the conversion of titles like GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City to mobile platforms has delivered a welcome dose of retro-gaming thrills, but for real fans of Rockstar's crime epics, a visit to San Andreas is the one they have been waiting for. The eighth game in the GTA series was a big step forward in terms of the explorable area and the sheer number of things you could do in the game. From the slums of Los Santos to the gambling palaces of Las Venturas (the game's equivalent of Vegas), GTA: SA feels like a living world and one where you could happily spend hours Read more ...