Reviews
Silk, BBC OneTuesday, 22 February 2011
There was a moment in last night’s Silk when a young solicitor turned up late for a trial. He was also an actor, he explained to his client’s counsel, and had to attend an audition. For a Head & Shoulders ad. The USP of Peter Moffat’s... Read more... |
I Don't Believe in Outer Space, The Forsythe Company, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 22 February 2011
An audience favourite has a USP that fills the house as long as they maintain the suspense - with William Forsythe, it’s the quality Diaghilev prized: unpredictability. When he set out in Germany in the 1980s he evolved an extreme classical ballet.... Read more... |
The Deep Blue Sea, West Yorkshire PlayhouseTuesday, 22 February 2011
The clipped Fifties accents raise a smile for the first few minutes, but what’s startling about this new production of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play is how universal, how timeless the story is. Director Sarah Esdaile wisely decides to play things... Read more... |
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Donmar WarehouseTuesday, 22 February 2011
Just in time to capitalise - is that how that word is spelled? - on awards season, along comes the latest Broadway-to-Britain transplant, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a musical all about a culture that likes to win, win, WIN! Does... Read more... |
Jan Gossaert’s Renaissance, National GalleryTuesday, 22 February 2011
Jan, or Janin? Gossart, or Gossaert? Or Mabuse? After a mere five centuries, we haven’t settled on a name quite yet (even for this exhibition: at the Metropolitan Museum, the same show spelt it “Gossart”). We don’t know where he was born,... Read more... |
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle, Barbican HallTuesday, 22 February 2011
Sir Simon Rattle's clever programming struck again last night, showing us that musical neoclassicism - for want of a better word, which would be something like neo-everything - didn't begin with Stravinsky, whose Apollo ballet is surely his most... Read more... |
Singles & Downloads 10Tuesday, 22 February 2011
This month's Singles & Downloads leads off with a new one from an absolute kingpin of US pop and hip hop. However, the focus is equally on the backwaters and curious places where other lively varieties of music dwell. From dancehall raucousness... Read more... |
Ross Kemp: Extreme World, Sky 1Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Ross Kemp won a Bafta for his documentary about being on the frontline in Afghanistan, so perhaps I should begin by saying all due respect, and all that, but how much can you ratchet up the hardman image before it threatens to dissolve into self-... Read more... |
Penguin Cafe/Portico Quartet, Usher Hall, EdinburghMonday, 21 February 2011
It’s the convention to review concerts on the first night of a tour rather than the last, but in this case it transpired it was rather wise to make an exception. These two groups may make very different kinds of music, but in their questing desire... Read more... |
Lenny Henry, TouringMonday, 21 February 2011
It takes a certain something to make a roomful of white people get their funk on. I feel I have dispensation to make that ridiculous generalisation because Lenny Henry, famously born in Dudley to immigrant Jamaican parents, addresses the whiteness... Read more... |
South Riding, BBC OneMonday, 21 February 2011
You can see why the BBC's drama gurus wanted to have a go at remaking South Riding, which last came around in 1974's hit version from Yorkshire Television. It has drama, romance, social conflict, lofty ideals and looks a bit like a parable for our... Read more... |
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rattle, Queen Elizabeth HallMonday, 21 February 2011
Anything anyone else can do, we can do better, seemed the mantra last night. It's probably a bit churlish to accuse the finest orchestra in the world of arrogance - surely that's their job? But the first night of the Berlin Philharmonic's four-... Read more... |
