Reviews
Feist, London PalladiumTuesday, 18 October 2011
A good measure of the passion felt for an act is how much of their crowd dresses like them. And though Leslie Feist is hardly Lady Gaga in the image stakes, it's gratifying that even in a rush to get to our seats I'm able to count at least five “... Read more... |
Origins of Us: Bones, BBC TwoTuesday, 18 October 2011
I was possibly not the right person to review this programme. I didn't do biology beyond GCSE, can't bear David Attenborough's Natural World programmes and laugh anytime someone says "homo erectus". Nevertheless, Alice Roberts, an anatomist and a... Read more... |
Jerusalem, Apollo TheatreTuesday, 18 October 2011
So it's back, then. Garlanded with awards, lionised in London and on Broadway, Jerusalem starring Mark Rylance returns to the West End for a limited run, in the same production and with many members of the earlier cast(s). Is this an opportunistic,... Read more... |
The Queen of Spades, Arcola TheatreTuesday, 18 October 2011
Russia’s Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, has enjoyed imaginative treatment on the British stage and screen. Brighton Theatre’s now-legendary Vanity conjured the world of the verse-novel Eugene Onegin vividly with three actors and minimal props. More... Read more... |
Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin, Imperial War MuseumMonday, 17 October 2011
Armed American soldiers stand in the stone window frames of a ruined building in Berlin, curious and disturbing echoes of those classical statues that so often were used to add portentous significance to a facade; but here in a 1961 photograph by... Read more... |
ContagionMonday, 17 October 2011
What goes around, well, goes around in Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, which manages the dual feat of being at once scare-mongering (hypochondriacs should stay well clear) and stultifyingly dull. A variant on the we're-all-essentially-connected... Read more... |
Sixty-Six Books, Bush TheatreMonday, 17 October 2011
Sometimes theatre people do mad things. Like stay up all night and the following day to “celebrate” the King James Bible and a theatre’s house-move to new premises. Its 400th year has been a good year for that collection of stories currently being... Read more... |
Downton Abbey, ITV1/ Lulu - Something to Shout About, BBC TwoSunday, 16 October 2011
I suspect writer Julian Fellowes's guilty secret is that he has an attic stuffed with novels from Mills & Boon, such are the luridly romantic plotlines and cliché-flirting characters in Downton Abbey. If you think you can see it coming, then you... Read more... |
Bang Bang Bang, Royal Court TheatreSunday, 16 October 2011
“Go home. This is not your business. This is not your war.” So a Congolese warlord tells Sadhbh, an Irish human-rights defender, in Stella Feehily’s new drama for Out of Joint. Has the arrogance and exploitation of colonialism been replaced by the... Read more... |
Sleeping Beauty/ FootlooseSaturday, 15 October 2011
We first see Lucy (Emily Browning) as a receptacle, letting a medical tube snake painfully deep down her throat. Australian novelist Julia Leigh characterises such behaviour as “radical passivity”, and her Jane Campion-mentored debut as director... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Schwertsik, ShostakovichSaturday, 15 October 2011
Bach: Five Keyboard Concertos Ramin Bahrami, Gewandhausorchester, Riccardo Chailly (Decca)We’re spoilt for choice in these concertos; Perahia, Schiff and Hewitt have given us excellent versions, and another new one by Alexandre Tharaud has just been... Read more... |
The Comic Strip Presents: The Hunt for Tony Blair, Channel 4Saturday, 15 October 2011
As this rampant return to our screens repeatedly underlined, one of the great joys of watching The Comic Strip throughout its 30-year frenzy of frantic - if intermittent - silliness has been never knowing what precise manifestation of oddness lurks... Read more... |
