Reviews
Pixies, O2 Academy, Birmingham review - indie veterans pack the houseThursday, 22 May 2025
Pixies might just be the ultimate Radio 6 Dad band. They’ve been around (on-and-off) for around 40 years; they’ve got a fine back catalogue of slightly weird, guitar-driven scuzzy rock music and they have absolutely no pretentions to being flash at... Read more... |
Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall review - Rameau magic outside the opera houseWednesday, 21 May 2025
With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major opera companies, it’s left to concert halls and country houses to fill the void. There’s a full-length treat ahead this summer with Rameau’s opéra-ballet Les Indes Galantes at Hampshire’... Read more... |
The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hander about defeating alcoholismTuesday, 20 May 2025
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter. The Fifth Step, though, is a gentler beast whose humour ends with a simple visual gag. Maybe because this is more... Read more... |
Josefowicz, LSO, Mälkki, Barbican review - two old favourites and one new oneTuesday, 20 May 2025
Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two established favourites from big names of the 20th century plus a new-to-me piece by a forgotten figure... Read more... |
Mr Swallow: Show Pony, Richmond Theatre review - magic tricks and mayhemTuesday, 20 May 2025
Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative talent – more than a decade ago, but he reached a new audience with his appearance as the good guy-goes-bad-then-good-... Read more... |
The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review - a feast of music from across the worldTuesday, 20 May 2025
Photographer Finetime and I have our first pints outside Dalton’s, a bar on Brighton seafront, at almost exactly midday. They are Beavertown Neck Oil IPA at 4.3%. The sun is out, glinting off the sea. Feels like the calm before the storm.Quarter of... Read more... |
Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the drama remains belowMonday, 19 May 2025
There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions and the “wonder-working spear” is a knife in a Cain and Abel story superimposed on Wagner’s myth (as if... Read more... |
The Bombing of Pan Am 103, BBC One review - new dramatisation of the horrific Lockerbie terror attackMonday, 19 May 2025
The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in Sky Atlantic’s Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. This focused on the dogged and agonising search for truth by Jim Swire (played... Read more... |
Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works, Royal Ballet review - the impressive range and reach of Christopher Wheeldon's craftMonday, 19 May 2025
Ballet is hardly a stranger to Broadway. Until the late 1950s every other musical had its fantasy ballet sequence – think Cyd Charisse in Singin’ in the Rain, or Laurey’s dream in Oklahoma!, whose first interpreter was its choreographer Agnes de... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Chapterhouse - White House DemosSunday, 18 May 2025
Quoted in an early music press article on his band Chapterhouse, singer-guitarist Stephen Patman said their ambition was “to have our records on sale in 20 years’ time. To leave something behind when we die." That was September 1990, in a piece tied... Read more... |
Songlines Encounters, Kings Place review - West African and Anatolian magicSaturday, 17 May 2025
Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great world music and performances, a chance to travel widely in music and culture without the burden of check-ins, passport control, flight delays, or transfers. All you need do is get to... Read more... |
The Deep Blue Sea, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - Tamsin Greig honours Terence RattiganSaturday, 17 May 2025
The water proves newly inviting in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's mournful 1952 play that some while ago established its status as an English classic. Lindsay Posner's production, first seen in Bath with one major change of cast since then,... Read more... |
