mon 21/07/2025

Reviews

Blood and Gifts, National Theatre

What is with the National and history plays? On the large stages of this theatre, the main fare is historical accounts of contemporary problems. Maybe the programmers here imagine that their audiences, like T S Eliot’s humankind, “can’t bear very...

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Edward Weston, Chris Beetles Gallery

Edward Weston's 'Golden Circle Mine, Death Valley', 1938

Edward Weston was once obsessed with photographing "toilets" (his word) and did it repeatedly in pursuit of the perfect image. "That gloss enamelled receptacle of extraordinary beauty" is how he described the scuzzy lav at the Gold Circle Mine in...

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The Human Comedy, Young Vic

Beautiful music is in the air: The extraordinary ensemble cast of 'The Human Comedy'

It takes a brave company to revive a notorious Broadway flop. It takes an even braver one to supplement a small cast with an amateur, community chorus of over 60 people, onstage for almost the entire duration. The Young Vic can rarely be accused of...

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The Trouble with the Pope, Channel 4

"The church shouldn't be interfering in the personal and private lives of people - we don't own them." The comment comes from a Catholic priest working with abused children in the Philippines, Father Shay Cullen. It would be good to hear from other...

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Don Pasquale, Royal Opera

Anticipating revivals of productions that were hardly vivacious in the first place, you can always find reasons to hope. Perhaps there'll be a dazzling house debut. Maybe someone, preferably the revival director, will bring a more focused individual...

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The Kid

What a difference the Atlantic makes. An abused, underprivileged boy tries to escape his neglectful mother and through the kindness of an unrelated adult discovers he has a rare talent that - a few ups and downs notwithstanding - eventually brings...

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The Last Night of the Proms, Fleming, Rysanov, BBCSO, Bělohlávek

It must have been with a leaden heart that the BBC Proms planning team realised that 2010's Last Night would fall plumb on 9/11. How to reconcile all the traditional Brit triumphalism and singing of Jerusalem with the rather more contemporary need...

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The Last Night of the Proms, BBC One: The Twitter Review

Part 2 @bbcproms. The madness begins. Ms Derham has not switched gowns in the interval. No sign of Titchmarsh, for which we must give thanks.The "traditional" necklace of laurels for Sir Henry Wood's bust. Wonder if he'd welcome his head being...

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Muse, Wembley Stadium

Some years ago I saw Muse playing at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge. Towards the end of the show, at a climactic moment (I think it might have been during their proggy epic, “New Born”), singer and guitarist Matt Bellamy reached into a bag attached...

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Russian afternoon, Rudy, Ivashkin, Kings Place

Two years after its first festive spree of 100 events, Kings Place has become the most congenial of all London's concert-hall zones in which to hang loose. On Friday afternoon I could have trotted happily between Russian piano classics, youth jazz...

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Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Gardiner, Royal Albert Hall

Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers are something of a musical enigma. Neither their true pitch nor order of movements, their origins, nor even whether they were intended as a complete sequence is known for certain, prompting scholar Denis Arnold to conclude...

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Eadweard Muybridge, Tate Britain

Multiple images of silhouetted horses cantering against blank backgrounds in grids of movement are what most people associate with Eadward Muybridge. Made in the late 1880s, they have contributed to his lasting reputation as a pioneer of photography...

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