Reviews
African Soul Rebels, Barbican HallSunday, 21 February 2010
Here’s a deceptively simple question. What is African music? Does a band make African music simply by dint of the fact they come from Africa? One of last night’s three African Soul Rebels acts was South Africa’s Kalahari Surfers. Ensconced behind a... Read more... |
As One/ Rushes/ Infra, Royal BalletSaturday, 20 February 2010
Someone sharp as a whip thought hard about the price-fun balance of the latest Royal Ballet triple bill. An accountant, probably. Deep inside the cloisters of the Royal Opera House, they said: “Now top price stalls are £97 each for Romeo and... Read more... |
The Headless WomanSaturday, 20 February 2010
A merciless anatomy of the inner meltdown that follows a hit-and-run accident, The Headless Woman is as baffling, brilliant, demanding and utterly original a work as you're likely to see all year. Its themes are confusion, amnesia, disavowal. The... Read more... |
EastEnders live, BBC OneSaturday, 20 February 2010
It was Stacey whodunnit. EastEnders’ first live broadcast last night, to celebrate 25 years on BBC One, ended with Stacey Branning (Lacey Turner) declaring, “It was me. I did it. I killed Archie. It was me.” So now we know, as one of the most drawn-... Read more... |
BBCSO, Bĕlohlávek, Barbican HallSaturday, 20 February 2010
Nothing stays the same for long in the hypersensitive symphonies of Bohuslav Martinů. A pastoral idyll accelerates to fairground mania before dropping off the merry-go-round, rapture fades in a single bar and victory may be snatched out of the jaws... Read more... |
First Aid Kit, Sneaky Pete's, EdinburghFriday, 19 February 2010
There is something eternally refreshing about catching a band on the first show of their first tour after the release of their first album. Banter remains untarnished by overuse; smiles appear spontaneous and gratitude genuine; mistakes are swatted... Read more... |
Ana Mendieta, Alison Jacques GalleryFriday, 19 February 2010
Works of art are usually quite easily recognisable: they’re in a frame, or on a pedestal, or (if it’s a particularly expensive one) there’s a security guard nearby. You’ll probably be in an art gallery or a smart private house too. But what about... Read more... |
Serenading Louie, Donmar WarehouseFriday, 19 February 2010
American spiritual anomie, that beloved realm of cultural enquiry that has fuelled the likes of Revolutionary Road and Ordinary People and much else besides, gets its latest theatrical airing in the form of Serenading Louie, a Lanford Wilson play... Read more... |
The Last StationFriday, 19 February 2010
The final days of Tolstoy are innately dramatic, as the American author Jay Parini intuited. The Last Station, published in 1990, was his novel about the novelist’s own denouement. Towards the end of his long and prodigiously successful life,... Read more... |
Murray Perahia, Barbican HallThursday, 18 February 2010
You'll have mazurkas coming out your ears by the end of next month. But what mazurkas they'll be! Fever pitch is approaching as the big pianistic guns line up to celebrate Chopin's 200th birthday anniversary on 1 March. The venerated pianists... Read more... |
The Great Offices of State, BBC TwoThursday, 18 February 2010
That title has been troubling me. The Great Offices of State is so stolid and dull, like an illustrated Ladybird children’s book from the 1950s - The Flags of the Commonwealth, or some such. And then you start trying to think of alternatives, a play... Read more... |
Paul Nash, The Elements, Dulwich Picture GalleryThursday, 18 February 2010
In the mid 1940s when the Queen Mother purchased Paul Nash’s Landscape of the Vernal Equinox (1943) Princess Margaret remembers saying, “Poor Mummy’s gone mad. Look what she’s brought back.” But though this painting is one of the undoubted... Read more... |
