Reviews
Gary Naylor
“But that’s what they’re paying for!” replied my son as we, a little shellshocked by the previous three hours, skirted Trafalgar Square on the way home. I had reservations about some key components of the alchemy that produces great theatre, but none about the spectacle, even more impressive (as we subsequently agreed) than the big Cirque du Soleil extravaganzas that cost a helluva lot more for a seat in Vegas. On its own terms, The Mongol Khan is a five-star show – and I’m already recommending it to friends. Not without reservations of course. As is the case for Grand Opera newbies, one must Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
If nothing else, you couldn’t accuse Greta Van Fleet of short-changing fans when it came to costumes or pyro. It felt like every few minutes the Michigan throwback rockers frontman Josh Kiszka was disappearing offstage, only to reappear in a variety of jumpsuits or robes, while roasting flames regularly shot up from behind the four piece.A shame that the outfit changes represented the most variety in a one-dimensional arena rock show. No matter what garb Kiszka donned, the songs remained the same, which was fantastic news from those wanting to enjoy a Led Zeppelin revival and substantially Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Last night saw two pieces of late 19th century French choral music – one a hugely popular staple of choral societies around the world, the other a complete novelty, lost for a hundred years – brought together in fascinating juxtaposition by the French period-instrument orchestra Insula, under their founding conductor Laurence Equilbey.The Fauré Requiem and Gounod’s Saint Francois d’Assise shared a radiant contemplation of death in music that is at once highly refined and yet utterly direct. They were both, in their different ways, exquisite.Equilbey is an innovative conductor both as the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Start with the biggest gig of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival: Angélique Kidjo’s Royal Albert Hall show definitely stays in the mind. Part of the story is the earth-shaking power and resonance of the voice of the "Queen of African music" which transforms the Royal Albert Hall magically into an intimate space.But there is more. Kidjo’s power is also in her advocacy, her activism, her optimism, her message of compassion and of inclusion. She had involved a host of guests (Youssou N’Dour, Ibrahim Maalouf, Laura Mvula) and also Chi-Chi Nwanoku’s Chineke Orchestra. The energy level started Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Well, wow. Just wow. At a time when there are fewer and fewer people I’m desperate to see live and so many of them are then disappointing, the celebration by Dave Stewart and friends of the Eurythmics catalogue, 40 years – 40 years! – after “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” was thrilling. An exhilarating two hours of high-level musicianship brilliantly produced.Only the presence onstage of Annie Lennox – with whom Stewart was last year inducted into the Rock'n’Roll Hall of Fame – would have improved it. Lennox, who no longer goes on the road, gave her blessing to the tour, which began Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“It’s nothing like Christmas,” Rachel (Amy-Leigh Hickman) hisses at her brother David (Kishore Walker). She’s trying to wrangle her family into their first ever Diwali celebration, but everything’s going wrong. Her dad Yash (Bhasker Patel) is getting on far too well with her boyfriend Matt (Jack Flammiger). And to top it off, mum Ruth (Catherine Cusack) has found everything but the most important item on Rachel’s meticulous shopping list: the matches.Passing, Dan Sareen’s new “family comedy-drama” at the Park Theatre, raises some interesting points about identity and belonging. But it goes Read more ...
Leila Greening
School of Instructions, a book-length poem composed of six sections, is a virtuosic dance between memory and forgetting, distant tragedy and personal grief. At times, Hutchinson’s language perhaps forgets itself in its own excess. His lines are richly luminescent, never cold or monochromatic.However, criticism of this opulence, a style described by Carol Rumens as "sea-lit", disintegrates when the radiance of lines like "the cherry-magnified boy who felt keenly fractures in / his bones clicking like wings" appear. Hutchinson marries words emphatically, with a constant attention to music. His Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Mami Wata is the female West African water god still worshipped in Iyi, a fragile, matriarchal village redoubt against modernity. Writer-director C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s third film makes Iyi a battleground for African identity, in a glistening black-and-white fable played out to the sea’s constant, low crash and wash.Mama Efe (Rita Edochie) is Mami Wata’s Intermediary, receiving the villagers’ tithe in return for divine protection. But when she can’t revive the drowned friend of her headstrong daughter Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh), the latter bitterly runs off with a vital totem, leaving her wiser Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
High Tide were one of many late Sixties and early Seventies British bands unearthed in the early Eighties by record collectors digging into what came after psychedelia. The bands didn’t have similar musical styles but were united by their obscurity and having sold barely any copies of their albums. All were largely forgotten until their rediscovery. Ben, Gracious!, Pussy, Red Dirt, T2, more. Who were these bands? Who were High Tide?As is the way, collector interest and the sharply rising prices of original pressings resulted in digging for information and reissues. High Tide had released two Read more ...
peter.quinn
This UK premiere of the award-winning, Dublin-born vocalist and composer Christine Tobin’s latest project, Returning Weather, presented an otherworldly ode to finding home – casting multiple perspectives on our yearning for connection and human warmth.Commissioned by The Dock, a multidisciplinary arts centre in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, the song cycle sees Tobin working for the first time with both traditional Irish musicians and jazz improvisers. As Tobin noted, it was also possibly the first time ever that uilleann pipes have featured as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival.The piper Read more ...
Saskia Baron
There’s much to admire here – May December features impressive performances from Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, and director Todd Haynes shows his mastery of classic Sirkian style. But disappointingly, this comes across as a movie that aims to critique media exploitation of a scandal while indulging in its own manipulation. May December is a riff on a real-life story from the ‘90s, when Mary Kay Letourneau, a Seattle teacher in her mid-thirties had sex with a 12-year old boy in her school. At the time, she was married with four children of her own. When Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Andrew Eldritch, vocalist and convent leader of the Sisters of Mercy, is a famously obtuse character. This may have made him seem somewhat mysterious over the years, but it has also meant that he has missed a few open goals too.The Sisters haven’t put out an album of original material in 30 years, but they still keep writing and performing new material. This means that their set now consists of about 50% familiar tunes and 50% of material that has never seen the inside of a recording studio. So, if you want to keep up with the new stuff, live recordings of varying sound quality on YouTube is Read more ...