mon 28/07/2025

Reviews

Brilliant Jerks, Southwark Playhouse review - busy three-hander casts a biting glance toward Uber

It never hurts the trajectory of a promising young playwright if they have a good eye for the zeitgeist, and the writer Joseph Charlton can certainly be said to possess that. His last play Anna X, inspired by high society scammer Anna Delvey and...

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Gerstein, Bintner, Waarts, Wigmore Hall review - fascinating connections, uneven music

Stefan Zweig once wrote that the difference between Busoni and every other pianist he had ever heard was the way the influential Tuscan-born Germanophile performer, composer and intellectual would always appear to be listening so intently to his own...

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Bridget Christie, The Haymarket, Basingstoke review - making the menopause funny

Bridget Christie is hot. Not in that way, you mucky pups. She’s hot because she’s 51 and menopausal, she tells us – and she’s on a mission to explain why, rather than marking a negative moment in her life, it’s the start of a new age, and a good one...

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Der Rosenkavalier, Irish National Opera review - world-class delight

Silver rose, golden voices. Richard Strauss calls for four of the best: two sopranos and a mezzo for the love-triangle that develops between a 17-year-old Count, his 32-year-old lover and the girl he falls for at first sight; a bass as one of opera’...

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Sleepova, Bush Theatre review - sweet coming of age play with a soft centre

Can a play ever be a bit too much like real life? The thought came to me while watching Matilda Feyisayo Ibini’s entertaining new play Sleepova at the Bush. This latest opening is almost a bookend to the excellent Red Pitch, premiered at the same...

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Creed III review - boxing clever

This third Creed film outgrows Rocky, leaving Stallone’s bridging presence behind for a wholly renewed series. Starring again as Adonis Creed, the illegitimate son of Rocky’s late rival Apollo, Michael B. Williams’ directorial debut builds a richly...

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Daisy Jones & The 6, Amazon Prime review - hit rock'n'roll novel doesn't make great TV

Based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six is the rags-to-riches-to-wreckage story of the titular Seventies rock band, supposedly somewhat based on Fleetwood Mac. Their journey from their fashion-defying...

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Woolf Works, Royal Ballet review - Wayne McGregor's modern classic impresses all over again

The more Wayne McGregor’s superb Woolf Works is staged, the richer it seems to become. It has started a third run at Covent Garden since its premiere there in 2015, which, considering the house lost over a year of performances, is some achievement....

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The Magic Flute, Welsh National Opera review - Mozart remodelled and remuddled

So why not rewrite The Magic Flute with a new text and a heavily reconstructed plot? After all, the original was just a pantomime, albeit one that embodied one or two big issues of the day (1791), but essentially popular theatre with a text by a...

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Album: Fever Ray - Radical Romantics

According to the press release for Karin Dreijer’s third album as Fever Ray, its completion was preceded by many hours of therapy with the result new things are known. Amongst them that Dreijer “can be struck by despair but also by the big feeling...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Jon Savage's 1980-1982 - The Art Of Things To Come

Jon Savage's 1980-1982 - The Art Of Things To Come continues a series which began in 2015 with 1966 - The Year The Decade Exploded, a compilation springing off from Savage’s book of the same name. A follow-up looked at 1965, but after that the...

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In The Realms of Sorrow, London Handel Festival, Stone Nest review - disappointed love has all the best tunes

Raw, muscular, visceral, haunting – this was Handel as you’ve never experienced him before. In this striking entry for the London Handel Festival,  an uncompromising production by Adele Thomas with conductor Laurence Cummings took four of the...

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