Reviews
Plaza Suite, Savoy Theatre review - real-life married couple brings panache and pain to period comedyMonday, 29 January 2024
Sarah Jessica Parker's screen renown as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City has made a London event out of the West End revival of Plaza Suite, the Neil Simon triptych from 1968 that is as definably New York as the TV series in which Parker made her... Read more... |
Williams, Kenny, Wigmore Hall review - an afternoon of early-Baroque blissMonday, 29 January 2024
It’s hard to imagine that any London audience this winter will hear more thoroughly gorgeous singing – or more refined musical artistry all round – than Nardus Williams delivered at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday afternoon. This was a magical hour of... Read more... |
Album: Plantoid - TerrapathMonday, 29 January 2024
Terrapath is a prog-rock album with a large dash of jazz-rock fusion. When the styles were in their Seventies pomp, an album side could be occupied by one cut. Both sides might feature, at most, four, maybe five tracks. Yet Plantoid’s debut LP fits... Read more... |
Bartlett, LPO, Bihlmaier, RFH review - a clear path through the stormSunday, 28 January 2024
Tempest-tossed seas seem all too apt a theme for January, so it felt fitting that the LPO decided to begin Saturday evening with Wagner’s stirringly elemental overture to The Flying Dutchman. As the programme note fascinatingly reminded us, he... Read more... |
This Blessed Plot review - a right old English carry onSunday, 28 January 2024
The hefty Essex builder Keith Martin, who plays a version of himself, as do most of the non-professional actors in Mark Isaacs' comic docufiction This Blessed Plot, is no Olivier or Branagh. But he puts brio and a touch of bombast into the dying... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Fantastic Voyage - New Sounds For The European CanonSunday, 28 January 2024
In October 1977 Glasgow punk band Johnny & the Self Abusers decided to change their name. This was a problem for Chiswick Records, who were about to release their debut single. The records were pressed, the sleeves printed and the press release... Read more... |
The Traitors, Series 2, BBC One review - back to the mind-labyrinthSaturday, 27 January 2024
Asking whether there could be an end to melody given only 12 notes to work with, Sergey Prokofiev compared the possibilities to a chess game: “for the fourth move of the White there will be about 60 million variants.”So it is with the basic formula... Read more... |
The Color Purple review - sensational second time round for Alice Walker's novel on screenSaturday, 27 January 2024
How many re-tellings can Alice Walker's The Color Purple take? A helluva lot, as the candid Sofia, one of the work's seminal characters, might put it.Adapted by Steven Spielberg for the screen in 1985, and then as a Broadway musical that had two... Read more... |
Paraorchestra, Hazlewood, Southbank Centre review - re-thinking the orchestral experienceSaturday, 27 January 2024
The Clore Ballroom at the Southbank Centre is usually an open-plan space within the foyer, a little ambiguous in its extent and purpose. Last night, for the first time, I saw it enclosed and separated off, ambiently lit and full of smoke, for the... Read more... |
Brian Klaas: Fluke review - why things happen, and can we stop them?Saturday, 27 January 2024
One day in the early 90s I accepted the offer of a lift from a friend to a university open day I hadn’t been planning to go to. I ended up attending that university and there met my wife, and if I hadn’t done that my life would have been very... Read more... |
Northanger Abbey, Orange Tree Theatre review - larky retelling of Austen’s satire with a poignant coreFriday, 26 January 2024
What Zoe Cooper has concocted in her loving rewiring of Jane Austen’s first completed novel looks at first sight like a knockabout satire of a satire. But her aim is more sober than that: a queer rereading of this text as she first experienced it as... Read more... |
All of Us Strangers review - a haunting story about the power of love, masterfully toldFriday, 26 January 2024
Andrew Haigh’s films come at you like stealth bombers, presenting everyday scenes in a spare narrative style, and then using them to blitz you with unexpected emotions. His latest is no exception. It starts with the familiar sight of a... Read more... |
