Reviews
Jules and Jim, Jermyn Street Theatre review - a bohemian love triangle ends badlyFriday, 28 April 2023
It’s apt that this new play, with characters moving in and out of Paris either side of World War I, is staged at this intimate theatre, one that always has the ambience of a below-ground oubliette. These bohemians are not penniless and cold as were... Read more... |
Lapwood, Hallé, Niemeyer, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - light and fiery Poulenc concertoFriday, 28 April 2023
“Let the organ thunder!” is the sentiment a lot of us will associate with an orchestral concert featuring the king of instruments. The Hallé’s programme with Anna Lapwood as soloist (repeating, from her BBC Proms debut with them in 2021, the Saint-... Read more... |
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, Komedia, Brighton review - a delightfully woozy head-tripFriday, 28 April 2023
My associate for the evening has recently returned from Breaking Convention, a conference on psychedelics, celebrating their renaissance in recent years. He’s been microdosing regularly. Around us the crowd sways, many with eyes closed, bobbing,... Read more... |
Berg review - a glorious visual meditation on the mountains of SloveniaFriday, 28 April 2023
It’s been a long time since I went walking in the mountains – too long. And Joke Olthaar’s film Berg (mountain) has intensified my longing for that very special experience.Three walkers follow the stony paths of the Alpine ranges in Triglav National... Read more... |
Rodéo review - heroine from the banlieues powers a rebel-teens sagaFriday, 28 April 2023
Reading an interview with the French director of Rodéo, Lola Quivoron, you come to realise her compelling film about dirt-bike-rider culture relied on a sage piece of casting. Despairing of ever finding a lead for her film project, Quivoron chanced... Read more... |
Bell, Dreisig, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - royal rifts, and uplifting MahlerThursday, 27 April 2023
Brett Dean’s opera Hamlet will play at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in June: the next stage of an acclaimed progress that began at Glyndebourne in 2017. Now on the last stretch of his three-year stint as composer-in-residence with the London... Read more... |
Little Richard: I am Everything review - a riveting account of 'the brightest star in the universe'Thursday, 27 April 2023
Lisa Cortés’s fast-paced documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything opens with a TV interview made in 1971, 16 years after the rock 'n' roll pioneer became an overnight success with groundbreaking hits like "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly... Read more... |
Goosby, RSNO, Bringuier, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - lyrical colour and dynamic brillianceThursday, 27 April 2023
When a publication as venerable as Gramophone features an artist on its front cover, it’s a surefire sign that they’ve hit the big time. This month that honour fell to young American violinist Randall Goosby and, coincidentally, he was the soloist... Read more... |
Dixon and Daughters, National Theatre review - cold discomfort harmThursday, 27 April 2023
Men are bastards. Okay, not all of us, but enough to make the lives of millions of women a misery. This we know, but anyone who has any doubts might be educated by some of the horrific statistics of sexual assault and domestic violence in the... Read more... |
New Regency Orchestra, Colour Factory review - sizzling Afro-Cuban big bandWednesday, 26 April 2023
Four trombones, four trumpets and five saxophones, six percussionists – this Afro-Cuban inspired band packs an irresistible punch and it’s loud! This is a big band sound that revives the glory days of Tito Puente and Dizzy Gillespie, a 1940s... Read more... |
Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life, Tate Modern review - the hidden depths of abstract art revealedWednesday, 26 April 2023
In this juxtaposition of Piet Mondrian, a world famous modernist, and Hilma af Klint, a little known Swedish painter, guess who knocks your socks off ! This fascinating show is a delight and a revelation, because it declares the spiritualist... Read more... |
LPO, Jurowski, RFH / LSO, BBC Singers, Rattle, Barbican review - spiderwebs, sublimity and a powerful speechTuesday, 25 April 2023
Complex, ambiguous late romantic works in concert programmes need something more direct to keep them company. Mozart and Richard Strauss make excellent bedfellows (and Strauss was an extraordinary Mozart interpreter): no wonder Vladimir Jurowski’s... Read more... |
