Reviews
Janelle Monáe, KOKOWednesday, 08 September 2010
The video for this Kansas fantasist’s new single shows Monáe in harshly lit close-up singing the adrenalin-charged “Cold War” directly to camera. But then halfway through the song her concentration goes and she starts laughing and then crying,... Read more... |
Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, Victoria & Albert MuseumWednesday, 08 September 2010
To mark Pope Benedict’s controversial visit to Britain next week, the V&A have mounted an exhibition devoted to four of the 10 tapestries Raphael designed for the Sistine Chapel – the first time they’ve ever been seen in this country. Depicting... Read more... |
The RunawaysWednesday, 08 September 2010
A drop of menstrual blood spatters the ground in the opening shot of The Runaways, an insolent enough metaphor for the unstaunchable female energy that drives writer-director Floria Sigismondi’s bracing biopic of the pioneering all-girl teenage... Read more... |
Orchestre National de France, Gatti, Royal Albert HallWednesday, 08 September 2010
It was one of those moments that every conductor (and orchestra) dreads: “The Procession of the Sage” from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is in rip-roaring full cry, percussion grinding and scratching, high trumpet screeching – but Daniele Gatti,... Read more... |
This is England '86, Channel 4Wednesday, 08 September 2010
For hundreds of thousands of people watching Shane Meadows’s TV debut last night, an updating (by three years) of the director’s skinhead movie, This is England (2006), the opening episode may well have been their first experience of a "Shane... Read more... |
Shoes, Sadler's Wells TheatreTuesday, 07 September 2010
Every time I go to Sadler’s Wells now I come out wondering if there’s something wrong with my hearing, so loud and numbing are their speakers. It’s a blight on a lot of shows, but on none more so than Shoes, because this is the first major London... Read more... |
Deathtrap, Noël Coward TheatreTuesday, 07 September 2010
It’s a rather difficult task to describe anything that occurs in Ira Levin’s marvellous old warhorse of a comedy thriller as it contains so many twists, turns, bluffs, double bluffs, triple - even quadruple - bluffs that any description of the plot... Read more... |
Shea Seger, The Half Moon, PutneyTuesday, 07 September 2010
Shea Seger is a woman with a story. A story of a career interrupted. At the age of 20, the fragile and slightly dangerous-looking blonde from Texas came over here and made a record which sent ripples across the pond of the Americana scene. Shortly... Read more... |
Bouquet of Barbed Wire, ITV1Tuesday, 07 September 2010
Apart from a few nips and tucks, age has not withered Bouquet of Barbed Wire. Anyone who can remember the original steamy adaptation of Andrea Newman’s fine novel will recognise the changes. Prue, no longer the manipulative cow who graced our... Read more... |
RSNO, Denève; Ensemble Matheus, Spinosi, Royal Albert HallTuesday, 07 September 2010
Is that asking a lot? Probably not, considering what's already been achieved at this year's BBC Proms. Looking back on it, last night felt implausibly rich yet gloriously digestible, too, at least in retrospect. I couldn't have predicted that I... Read more... |
Tamara DreweTuesday, 07 September 2010
If Cold Comfort Farm and Hot Fuzz got chatting down their local one night, the conversation might go something along the lines of Tamara Drewe. Putting the “sex” in Wessex, Stephen Frears’s latest film loosens the corsets of the Hardy pastoral,... Read more... |
Caitlin Rose, The WindmillMonday, 06 September 2010
Last night was the third and probably last time this 21-year-old Nashville songstress will grace the humble Windmill pub in Brixton with her charismatic yet down-to-earth presence. Not because the gig wasn’t a sell-out and an unqualified success,... Read more... |
