Reviews
Billy Budd, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSunday, 11 August 2013
It’s not a crowd-pleaser like Albert Herring, nor wittily fanciful like A Midsummer Night’s Dream or macabre like The Turn of the Screw and certainly not the classic that Peter Grimes has become, and until three years ago Glyndebourne had never even... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Eddie Noack, The Dictators, The Allman Brothers, Clifton ChenierSunday, 11 August 2013
Eddie Noack: Psycho – The K-Ark and Allstar Recordings 1962–69Eddie Noack’s 1968 single “Psycho” was virtually unknown until Elvis Costello released his cover version in 1981. By that time, Noack had been dead for three years. After its resurrection... Read more... |
Prom 35: Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony, Jansons/Prom 36: Bach Oratorios, GardinerSaturday, 10 August 2013
Mahler, who like most of us thought Bach was “the greatest of them all” and studied in depth the edition of his complete works, would have been delighted by last night’s extravaganza – a true celebration of what makes the Proms the much quoted “... Read more... |
Prom 33: Uchida, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, JansonsSaturday, 10 August 2013
Precious few musicians can instill such a sense of intimacy into their playing as to have us believing that the Royal Albert Hall is the Wigmore Hall and that their performance is for an audience of one and not six thousand. Mitsuko Uchida is... Read more... |
Field of Blood: The Dead Hour, BBC OneFriday, 09 August 2013
There are not generally a lot of laughs in dead bodies. So Raymond Chandler saw the funny side of murder, and Carl Hiassen dresses felonies in a bright Hawaiian shirt. But Glasgow, you’d think, would tend to keep corpses and comedy in separate boxes... Read more... |
Prom 34: Nigel Kennedy, Palestine Strings, the Orchestra of LifeFriday, 09 August 2013
There had been a buzz of anticipation about this late-night Prom by Nigel Kennedy, the Palestine Strings and his Orchestra of Life, and it was completely sold out. After a long association with Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and 2.4 million sales of the... Read more... |
The Lone RangerFriday, 09 August 2013
Kemosabe, The Lone Ranger is fun. Despite its star and producer blaming American critics for poor box office stateside, this film is Pirates of the Caribbean on horseback - and that's the Pirates franchise before it bloated in 2007.There is a lot of... Read more... |
Legally High, Channel 4Friday, 09 August 2013
“How much risk are you willing to take when the only benefit is pleasure?” asks toxicologist Dr John Ramsey, as if pleasure in itself were not worth risking much for. He has a collection of over 29,000 psychoactive drugs but doesn’t seem to have... Read more... |
Shadowrun ReturnsFriday, 09 August 2013
It feels odd to consider cyberpunk - once the very bleeding edge of science fiction - as nostalgia, but what was once seen by some as an almost credible future is now to be found in the cultural dump-bin marked NINETIES, alongside the Tamagotchi,... Read more... |
Liolà, National TheatreThursday, 08 August 2013
Sicilian location, Irish populace, Balkan Roma music: Richard Eyre’s production of a Pirandello bagatelle could easily have turned into the kind of Europudding more common in cinema. That it fairly dances over the pitfalls is due partly to a well-... Read more... |
Camp Bestival 2013, Lulworth Castle, DorsetThursday, 08 August 2013
Camp Bestival is overrun with children, even the night is alive with them. Where WOMAD is full of old hippies, Camp Bestival is full of raver-parents who refuse to stop shaking a party limb, even if they must haul little Finlay around on an exotic,... Read more... |
Looking For HortenseThursday, 08 August 2013
Don't spend too much time looking for Kristin Scott Thomas in writer-director Pascal Bonitzer's Looking For Hortense (aka Cherchez Hortense). In keeping with the fleeting presence afforded the Hortense of the title, the divine Scott Thomas... Read more... |
