Reviews
Veronica Lee
Five years ago, Rachel Parris tells us, she never thought she would one day be married, a mother and a home owner. Now she's all three – and a stepmother as well – and this year is about to turn 40. It's quite a journey, which she talks about in her new show, Poise.But it's not all personal as there's a fair amount of political humour here too. After all, she did get her big break on the BBC's satire show The Mash Report, which transmogrified into Late Night Mash on Dave and was cancelled by both channels. She says it was because of the shows' left-leaning slant, so she's keen to balance Read more ...
David Nice
No-one in the musical world could possibly surpass the communicative skills of Abel Selaocoe – pushing the boundaries of cello and vocal technique in a myriad of voices, all cohering in works of staggering breadth, getting the audience to sing at the deepest of levels.Amazingly, though, the next day’s act in the Dublin International Chamber Music Festival actually matched him: accordionists Dermot Dunne and Martin Tourish (pictured below - Tourish left, Dunne right) in the city’s first neoclassical building, the jewel that is the Casino in Merino, playing every note of Bach’s Goldberg Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Times change, people don't. Does a knighthood sit well on a man who shags anonymous strangers in the Blue Lion out of hours? Emlyn Williams played his own fruity lead when his play Accolade premiered in 1950 - Bill Trenting, a hugely successful writer of seamy bestsellers who (improbably) is about to be knighted and (still more improbably) won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but who will be publicly exposed for his double life enjoying promiscuous stranger-sex in Rotherhithe bars, if he doesn't pay his blackmailer. Sir William, as everyone must now get used to calling him, is on arguably Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
New York in the 1980s is the setting for Abi Morgan’s new six-part drama, and it’s a city riddled with squalor, homelessness, racism and rampant crime. The Aids pandemic is also beginning to rear its hideous head. It’s here that the brilliant puppeteer Vincent Anderson (Benedict Cumberbatch) has masterminded his children’s TV puppet show Good Day Sunshine, which bears a striking resemblance to such Jim Henson creations as Sesame Street and The Muppets.You might think that Vincent would be happy with his life, since he’s hailed as a genius in his field and Good Morning Sunshine isn’t just a TV Read more ...
Mark Sheerin
Two shows at Jupiter Artland, one in a barn, one in a ballroom, showcase two Scottish artists, whose work shares a sense of lightness and joy. The sun was out, there was happiness all round. Laura Aldridge had painted the walls of her barn space a buttercup yellow and applied translucent film to the windows so that to spend time in her bijou show was like being in a solarium. Andrew Sim, on the other hand, offered a suite of cheery pastel works depicting plants, which echoed the decorative plasterwork of his ballroom ceiling to create another totalising space.Whereas Aldridge bathes her work Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Towards the end of the encore, Deap Vally bring on their friend Solon Bixler. Frontwoman Lindsey Troy hands him her guitar. Despite this being their farewell tour, these two songs, she tells us, are new. The duo, now briefly a trio, go ballistic, a punk rock explosion ensues. Drummer Julie Edwards attacks her kit like Animal from The Muppets, Troy stomps like a glam rock loon before rolling about the floor, and Bixler scissor-kicks his way to stand aloft the bass drum.They’re burning with the right stuff. They have been all night.If life was fair, which we all know it isn’t, this month I’d be Read more ...
David Nice
Recreating Handel’s Egypt with a first-rate cast on the summer opera scene could have been the exclusive domain of Glyndebourne, bringing back its revival of David McVicar’s celebrated Giulio Cesare in July. Yet over the Irish sea, in the grounds of a castle with exquisite gardens above the lushly wooded valley of the river Blackwater, they’ve pulled it off. This is a singular triumph of which Caesar would be proud.Modest budgeting means a spare but effective and unfussy production from Tom Creed which brings out the best in everyone, and the Irish Baroque Orchestra under Nicholas McGegan, no Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Begin the mission and the funds will come,” says feisty, tubercular nun Francesca Cabrini (Christiana Dell’Anna; Patrizia in Gomorrah) to Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini) in 1889. She specialises in defying expectations, especially when men tell her she should stay where she belongs. She became the first American saint, canonised in 1946.Directed by Christian conservative Alejandro Monteverde, whose Q-Anon-approved movie Sound of Freedom about child sex-trafficking was, disquietingly, a controversial hit last year, this biopic is overlong, sanitised and sepia-toned, awash with angelic Read more ...
Robert Beale
When it was first announced that Mark Elder was to become music director of the Hallé, I phoned a friend who knew him well from serving on his staff at English National Opera in earlier years. “He’s completely devoted,” he said. “He never does anything superficially, he’s always well prepared, he’s a good orchestra trainer, and he’ll last longer than other conductors.” It was a description and prediction that was amply fulfilled in the following quarter-century.And, with characteristic meticulous planning and awareness of what was right for the occasion, Sir Mark chose to present a European Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The Israel-Palestine conflict aptly infuses a haunted house in Muayad Alayan’s story of layered loss. The Shapiro family home in Jerusalem which grieving British-Jewish husband Michael (Johnny Harris) and daughter Rebecca (Rebecca Calder) retreat to as a sanctuary already bears the pain of past Palestinian owners, as ghost stories multiply.This is a girl’s adventure story from 10-year-old Rebecca’s perspective, as she longs for her mum, dead in a car crash in which Rebecca was a passenger, hurt repressed by her dad. “I keep trying to hide everything that might trigger her past,” he tells a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“We hope if you like it, you'll buy it,” says Paul McCartney. It’s 4 April 1963 and The Beatles are on stage and about to perform their third single “From Me to You.” It’s out in a week.To his left, John Lennon instantly responds to the entreaty. “And if you don't like it,” he retorts. “Don't buy it.”This atypical approach to promotion was witnessed by the audience gathered in the Roxburgh Hall of Stowe School, a Buckinghamshire all-boys institution hosting a late afternoon concert nominated as “probably The Beatles most unusual live gig” by the foremost Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Faye is okay. Or, at least she says she’s okay. But is she really? And, if she really is, like really okay, why is she seeking help for her insomnia?As Irish playwright Ciara Elizabeth Smyth brings her ward-winning Fringe Festival play, Lie Low, to the Royal Court as part of a nationwide tour, audiences will have a chance to see for themselves what the matter with Faye is. And something definitely is. In an early scene of this intense 70-minute psychological thriller, the thirtysomething woman is asking a doctor for help: she can’t sleep and we soon discover why.About a year ago, Faye came Read more ...