Reviews
Hänsel und Gretel, GlyndebourneMonday, 26 July 2010
Glyndebourne’s Hänsel und Gretel comes in a large cardboard box, with plain brown wrapper, duct-tape and a barcode. There’s a public health warning, too: sugar and spice and all things nice come at a price. The evil witch Rosina Sweet-Tooth is... Read more... |
Sherlock, BBC OneSunday, 25 July 2010
There was a risk that this new take on the indestructible sleuth of Baker Street might be smothered at birth by a dust-storm of pre-publicity, with coverage stretching from the tabloids to Andrew Marr (who really seems to believe he's an arts... Read more... |
Amish: World's Squarest Teenagers, Channel 4Sunday, 25 July 2010
Where can or will television’s thirst for tabloid anthropology fetch up? In previous tribal exchanges, wives have been swapped, geeks have gone to babe school, thugs to boot camp, WAGs to townships, Papua New Guineans to the big smoke. Posh girls... Read more... |
GainsbourgSunday, 25 July 2010
Serge Gainsbourg, like Charles Bukowski, is one of those blokes who should be banned as a role model for impressionable young men, who may start imagining they too can behave like disgusting old soaks and pull any gorgeous bird who comes into their... Read more... |
Goerner, BBC Philharmonic, Sinaisky, Royal Albert HallSaturday, 24 July 2010
"Well, that's going straight onto my iPod!" declared my friend at the interval. Introduce anyone to Scriabin's lush Piano Concerto in F sharp minor - a real concert rarity - and the response is always the same: love at first sight. The tunes, the... Read more... |
Would I Lie to You? BBC OneFriday, 23 July 2010
The fact that we humans are, technically speaking, bad liars proves that we are instinctively moral creatures (rather than getting our morals from our god or our parents) and that lying is therefore, evolutionarily speaking, probably a bad idea. You... Read more... |
Prince, Super Rock Festival, LisbonFriday, 23 July 2010
Travelling along at 140kph in a Mercedes in a police convoy on the wrong side of the road with Prince, and Portuguese fado singer and his new protégé Ana Moura in the front, plus the artist’s agent and Rolling Stones sax player Tim Ries, is pretty... Read more... |
Danton's Death, National TheatreFriday, 23 July 2010
The longest and most densely historical play by Georg Büchner (1813-37) is a potential monster. In German, Dantons Tod can run to four hours or more. There's little action and much speechifying. In plays by his equally wordy, history-obsessed... Read more... |
BaarìaFriday, 23 July 2010
Giuseppe Tornatore is known overwhelmingly for one international hit. There have been sundry other films from him in the 21 years since Cinema Paradiso won the Best Foreign Language Oscar, but none which have sold such a seductive vision of Italian... Read more... |
The Hotel Inspector, FiveFriday, 23 July 2010
I stayed in a frightful hotel in Plymouth once. Decrepit rooms, filthy windows, potentially fatal cuisine, sinister staff… By contrast, that same city’s Astor Hotel looked quite pleasant, though not if you were viewing it through the gimlet eyes of... Read more... |
Coppélia, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseThursday, 22 July 2010
Coppélia is the name of the doll in the ballet-comedy - not that of the heroine, who is a bad pixie named Swanilda, a girl of youthful capriciousness but a heart of gold. What you hope for when you go to see this usually rather quaint 19th-century... Read more... |
Gilberto Gil, Royal Festival HallThursday, 22 July 2010
The dreadlocks are gone, the dark suit is gone, the acoustic guitar which was his faithful travelling companion during the four years as Brazilian Minister of Culture, is also gone. Instead, Gilberto Gil skipped on stage with a cool, short, grey... Read more... |
