Reviews
Sundance London 2013: Upstream ColorTuesday, 23 April 2013
Unburdened by conventional narrative sense, Upstream Color is a true curiosity. Seductively strange, woozily kinetic and above all romantic, Shane Carruth's second feature is a little film with big, bizarre ideas. Incorporating pig farming,... Read more... |
The Prisoners, BBC OneTuesday, 23 April 2013
“The best times I've ever had were in prison,” says Crystal, aged 23, one of the three inmates being followed in The Prisoners (this was originally planned as episode one, but was bounced from the schedules by the death of Baroness Thatcher). On the... Read more... |
Orpheus, Battersea Arts CentreTuesday, 23 April 2013
Orpheus, set in an imaginary Paris in the 1930s, delivers an unashamedly escapist and a quite delightful evening's entertainment. The Orpheus myth is often a pretext for fantasy or fun. Maybe the original, tragic tale is just too unremittingly dark... Read more... |
Juan Diego Flórez and friends, Barbican HallMonday, 22 April 2013
It takes a certain kind of artist to book American mezzo-extraordinaire Joyce DiDonato as a supporting act. It’s a risk. Even if you happen to be Juan Diego Flórez. But it’s one that actually paid off on the first night of Flórez’s three-concert... Read more... |
Buika and London Lucumi Choir, Union ChapelMonday, 22 April 2013
The choir sing off stage at first, under the wide arch to the side before filling the platform and singing the praises of Cuba’s Orisha spirits. Those Orisha guys must be shining like beads on a necklace. Lucumi were finalists in the 2008 BBC Choir... Read more... |
Jimeoin, Queen's Hall, EdinburghMonday, 22 April 2013
No theme, no message, no set, no title. Northern Irish comedian Jimeoin is a beguilingly old-fashioned kind of standup. “Just jokes,” he told us at the beginning of his new show, and he was true to his word. His gift lies in mining the quirks of... Read more... |
BernieMonday, 22 April 2013
"There are people in town that would have shot her for five dollars." Those are the shocking but undeniably comic words of a resident of Carthage, Texas, who's nonchalantly describing the strength of the vitriol felt toward murder victim Marjorie... Read more... |
Wiley, The ForumSunday, 21 April 2013
It was a full house in Kentish Town for a homecoming show for grime pioneers Wiley, Skepta and JME. A far cry from the Sidewinder and Eskimo Dance parties that spawned so many of the scene’s main players, instead this was a night that carried an air... Read more... |
Mayerling, The Royal Ballet/ Le Jeune Homme et La Mort, English National BalletSunday, 21 April 2013
The acting tradition is refined in British ballet to a height not matched anywhere else in the world - distilled in Frederick Ashton’s ballets, expanded in Kenneth MacMillan’s. This repertoire has produced a stream of exceptional dance actors over... Read more... |
Verdi's Requiem, Philharmonia Orchestra, Gatti, Royal Festival HallSunday, 21 April 2013
It was clear that there was an Italian on the podium. Muted strings invoked an atmosphere so crepuscular that, when one involuntarily closed one’s eyes, the murmur of voices intoning the words “Requiem aeternam” seemed to come from deep inside the... Read more... |
The Breadwinner, Orange Tree TheatreSunday, 21 April 2013
Although overwhelmingly remembered now as a novelist, Somerset Maugham was best known during his lifetime as a playwright. “England’s Dramatist”, as the newspapers christened him, produced more than 20 plays spanning the length of his career,... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nathan Abshire, Nick Drake, DonovanSunday, 21 April 2013
Art Ensemble of Chicago: A Jackson in Your House/Message to Our Folks/Reese and the Smooth OnesA New Orleans brass band plays a death march. What sounds like a saucepan is tapped steadily. The music suddenly dives into swing. A bicycle horn... Read more... |
