Reviews
theartsdesk at Salzburg Jazz & the City Festival - perfection in free venuesTuesday, 24 October 2023
As a cultural destination, Salzburg really is hard to beat. Each year, a million and a half tourists descend on this compact city with its baroque architectural delights, and a population of just 150,000. The city of Mozart and of the Salzburger... Read more... |
Un ballo in maschera, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan Hall review - Italianate vitality, if not much finesseMonday, 23 October 2023
Eighteenth century Sweden is the nominal setting for A Masked Ball, but its essence is a unique mixture of Italian testosterone and French opéra-comique elegance. If this concert performance brought it closer to the indiscriminate vitality of early... Read more... |
Rodrigo y Gabriela, Town Hall, Birmingham review - Mexican superstar guitarists bring a set of new soundsMonday, 23 October 2023
Despite playing together for almost 25 years, Rodrigo y Gabriela are still taking chances in the live arena and refusing to take the easy path. They certainly didn’t put on a heritage act set in Birmingham this weekend.The Mexican guitarists’ show... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Serge Gainsbourg - L'Homme à tête de chouSunday, 22 October 2023
Marilou lies on the ground. She’s been bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher. Its foam covers her body. Her murderer is a forty-something man who has become obsessed with her. She shampoos hair in a barbers, where he first comes across her.... Read more... |
Dear England, Prince Edward Theatre review - still a winner in its new West End homeSaturday, 21 October 2023
It was interesting, in the same week that the England football team trounced Italy 3-1 in a Euros qualifier, to see Dear England again, the National Theatre smash that has just embarked on a West End run at the Prince Edward Theatre.One of the three... Read more... |
La Rondine, Opera North review - rehabilitation for a Puccini damp squib?Saturday, 21 October 2023
The signal achievement of this production of La Rondine may be that James Hurley (director) and Kerem Hasan (conductor) have rehabilitated it to its proper place, against the perception that it’s the least successful of Puccini’s mature operas.Even... Read more... |
Snayx/Shelf Lives/Monakis, Patterns, Brighton review - storming, punking triple-headerFriday, 20 October 2023
Patterns is a small, low-ceilinged, underground, seafront venue. Tonight it would be a feast for any passing ancient succubae who happens to feed on raw human energy. From 7.00 PM until 10.00 PM, the room plays host to a package tour of three rising... Read more... |
John Robins, touring - high anxiety can be funnyFriday, 20 October 2023
Recovery from alcoholism is now standard fare in stand-up comedy; so too are living with ADHD, OCD, depression and anxiety. It's the last of those conditions, combined with becoming sober, that 2017 Edinburgh Comedy Award winner John Robins... Read more... |
Portia Coughlan, Almeida Theatre review - atmospheric revival of Marina Carr's bleak 1996 dramaFriday, 20 October 2023
In 1994, the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin commissioned Marina Carr to write a play to celebrate its centenary. She walked the wards, met the new mothers, and wrote in a hospital study.Who knows what the commissioners were expecting, maybe... Read more... |
Killers of the Flower Moon review - the Osage tragedyFriday, 20 October 2023
At the centre of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, closely adapted from the 2017 non-fiction book by the investigative journalist David Grann, is the true story of how the white former doughboy Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprii) was... Read more... |
Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed review - the closeted life of a Hollywood greatFriday, 20 October 2023
Rock Hudson was built up as a silver screen archetype of heterosexual manhood, with his 6ft 5in frame and muscular physique, but his story has subsequently come to epitomise a Hollywood system built on illusions and delusions. Supposedly the kind of... Read more... |
Foe review - unsettling sci-fi dramaFriday, 20 October 2023
Garth Davis’s Foe is cast from that classic science fiction mould that uses a fantastical premise to explore the commonplace, yet profound aspects of our lives; in this case, the intricacies, dissatisfactions and anxieties of a marriage.At the same... Read more... |
