Reviews
Marina Vaizey
The first and most unusual aspect of Caro at Chatsworth is that it is there: 15 outstanding sculptures by Sir Anthony Caro, placed in an irregular pattern around the formal 950ft early-18th-century Canal Pond, situated facing the southern vista of the great Baroque house. For these sculptures are tough, the antithesis of any sentimental attachment to a rural Arcadia, almost relentlessly urban and even architectural. Caro once used the term "archisculpture" for his ambitious work.Caro objects to being called a living national treasure or any such sobriquet, although at the age of 88 it Read more ...
Veronica Lee
If Twenty Twelve's creators were looking for inspiration for their mockumentary about those making London 2012 happen, they need have gone no further than reading the headlines (now daily) in London newspapers about Tube drivers demanding more wedge to work during the Games, the Civil Service asking their staff to work from home and the London Mayor's transport officials suggesting that August may be a good time to find an alternative route to work - this after Londoners have put up with years of delays and cancellations while the system was being upgraded not for their benefit, but for Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Musicians can go one of two ways after a period of prolonged professional absence. The hiatus can either set them free (Horowitz) or screw them up (Pogorelich). In the case of Maxim Vengerov, we already knew that the latter hadn't happened. A successful early reappearance with the St Petersburg Philharmonic at the Royal Festival Hall a few weeks back - where he stepped in for an AWOL Martha Argerich - proved that. But the real test was always going to be his recital comeback at the Wigmore Hall last night. How has the Russian violinist evolved since we last heard him in London in 2007?A lot Read more ...
fisun.guner
The mind is a beautiful mystery. We think, therefore we are. But how is the mind and physical body related? How does a lump of matter give rise to consciousness? Naturally, it’s a question that’s exercised great minds over many centuries, and will, I’m sure, continue to do so for another few. Unsurprisingly, you won’t find any answers in the Wellcome Collection’s spectacular exhibition, Brains: The Mind as Matter. Instead it ponders a very different question, one that is, for historical, sociological and anthropological reasons, equally fascinating: it asks not what the brain does or how it Read more ...
Ismene Brown
All year we've had to wait for a world premiere, and two come along at once. Last night was built to make some noise about the three most impressive young names in Royal Ballet choreography, and that will be where the PR story ends, but not where the flat disappointment ends. For while Christopher Wheeldon is shown at his magnificent best in an early piece, both Liam Scarlett and Wayne McGregor's new creations are nowhere near the best that either has shown.They're opposites, but alike in why they fail. Scarlett’s Sweet Violets is an impenetrable jangle of narrative in the old style; McGregor Read more ...
philip radcliffe
The cultural triumvirate of the Hallé Orchestra, the Royal Exchange Theatre and The Lowry have joined forces for this new production of the 1953 hit musical Wonderful Town. Leonard Bernstein would surely have been a happy man to hear his score, dashed off in a mere five weeks at short notice, played by the 65-strong Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir Mark Elder, who has been nursing the ambition to do the show here since he saw the 2004 Broadway production. Fisher has pizzazz and a gift for comedyOn The Town or West Side Story, written either side of it, it is not, but the rich score has Read more ...
Steven Gambardella
Remote Control and its accompanying series of events, Television Delivers People, coincides with the analogue to digital switch-over, marking a shift in the history of a medium which will soon be eclipsed by on-demand content. While this may sound mundane on paper, the humble light-emitting box has been the elephant in the room for the last half-century, profoundly transforming living habits and shaping political discourse. What’s more, television at its worst has represented the kind of passive, habitual looking to which art-making is intrinsically opposed. The show itself is a survey Read more ...
geoff brown
After conducting two performances of Parsifal since Saturday and one of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, most human beings would be spending a day curled up at home. But Valery Gergiev doesn’t know what carpet slippers look like. Besides, he’s currently on tour in Britain with his Mariinsky Opera forces, and he’s conducting nothing but blockbusters. Last night, Verdi’s Requiem in London. On Good Friday, it’s the epic Parsifal again, in Birmingham. The tour finished, he’ll be back in St Petersburg by Sunday, launching the Mariinsky’s third International Piano Festival. Brisk rhythms melted into Read more ...
emma.simmonds
“Feel good” is a description applied far too frequently in reviews, often to movies which are formulaic and saccharine in the extreme. However, Le Havre is a film that’s begging to be described as just that, though it’s far from conventional or fluffy fare. This buoyantly beneficent and frequently hilarious picture combines artful absurdity and a neo-noir aesthetic with a pervasive sense of social justice and a laudable belief in the kindness of strangers. From Aki Kaurismäki, the writer, director and producer of The Man Without a Past and one of the world’s most distinctive film-makers, Le Read more ...
Nick Levine
Last year, Kylie Minogue's Aphrodite World Tour took in 77 shows across five continents and grossed over $50m. It was a typically lavish production featuring a bespoke mechanical stage, costumes designed by Dolce & Gabbana and high-impact jets requiring 25,000 litres of recycled water; gig-goers in the designated "Splash Zone" were even given towels and ponchos with their tickets.Tonight's show at Hammersmith Apollo is a little bit different. It's the last of three UK dates on the singer's so-called Anti Tour, which is billed as "small, intimate and unexpected, featuring a stripped back Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
“There’s something wrong here. I don’t know exactly what it is, but something.” It’s no coincidence that this line bookends Paolo Sorrentino’s much-anticipated English language debut – it's a beguilingly strange, distancing, even discombobulating venture, at times gently lyrical, at others nightmarish. While there is indeed something about it that feels wrong, a more accurate turn of phrase might be that there’s something missing here. In brief, this is a film about a son avenging his father in which no father-son relationship exists.This is far from unintentional, and Sorrentino has Read more ...
philip radcliffe
The world premiere here of Monkee Business the Musical was planned long before the untimely death in February of Davy Jones, the Manchester-born member of the manufactured band that outsold The Beatles and the Rolling Stones half a century ago. The coincidence lends a poignancy to the event and the Manchester run has been dedicated to his memory. The little jockey did well, reluctantly giving up horse-racing as a teenager, at his dad’s insistence, to star as the Artful Dodger in Oliver! in the West End and Broadway before being signed up by NBC Television for the Monkees Read more ...