Reviews
Bones and All review - eat, don't heatSaturday, 26 November 2022
You expect gross-out movies to send your hands flying in front of your eyes. But Luca Guadagnino's ludicrous Bones and All is not just gory but grossly sentimental, too. Reuniting the Italian director with the star of his breakout hit Call Me... Read more... |
Basel Saleh, Sansara, United Strings of Europe, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - music of sanctuary and solidaritySaturday, 26 November 2022
This collaboration between two young and exciting ensembles, the choir Sansara and the United Strings of Europe, had its heart in a good place. It explored notions of sanctuary and solidarity with those suffering displacement, through a diverse... Read more... |
Nanny review - no spoonfuls of sugar in this spooky taleSaturday, 26 November 2022
Nanny is being marketed as a horror movie, and arachnophobes should certainly beware, but it’s also a stylish exploration of race and class by African-American writer-director Nikyatu Jusu.Its heroine is Aisha (Anna Diop) a Senegalese graduate... Read more... |
Wet Leg, O2 Forum Kentish Town review - eclectic glee from an emerging bandSaturday, 26 November 2022
Arriving to the second night of two shows in the same venue, you would expect it to be a little quieter. But Wet Leg’s second outing at the O2 in Kentish Town was anything but – their burgeoning reputation (they are supporting Harry Styles next year... Read more... |
Elf, Dominion Theatre review - hit musical revival slays it againSaturday, 26 November 2022
Just about the three toughest tricks to pull off in the theatre are making a musical, making a family show and making characters so charming that even the most cynical in the house are pulling for the little guy (or not so little in this case). So... Read more... |
Henry V, Shakespeare's Globe review - anatomy of a violent, murky world of leadershipSaturday, 26 November 2022
It begins in darkness. All that can be heard is the sound of a human struggling painfully for breath so that even before the lights go up we have the sense of a life coming to an end. It’s a stark contrast to the triumphalism of the play’s original... Read more... |
Dinner with Groucho, Arcola Theatre review - often opaqueFriday, 25 November 2022
The set at the Arcola for Frank McGuinness’s Dinner with Groucho naturally features a table with two place settings and a backdrop of clouds in a blue sky. Overhead are pendant globe lights that will transform into stars. But the floor is a key... Read more... |
Hewitt, Hallé, Schuldt, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - lightening the gloomFriday, 25 November 2022
If there was a certain doom-laden dimension to Clemens Schuldt’s Bridgewater Hall programme with the Hallé ( … Requiem … Mozart in D minor … Strauss describing Death and …), it was easily lightened by the conductor’s own approach and personality.... Read more... |
Sara Pascoe, Assembly Hall, Tunbridge Wells review - motherhood and the perils of fameFriday, 25 November 2022
Sara Pascoe comes on stage to tell us there has been a small wardrobe malfunction. She's made an effort and is wearing something glitzy, but it restricts her movement in one direction and gives too much in another. Should she go and change into... Read more... |
Working Men's Club, Chalk, Brighton review - untrammelled, noisy and grim-facedThursday, 24 November 2022
The chorus to Working Men’s Club’s song “Money is Mine” usually runs, “Endless depression, it’s time/Suicide is yours when the money is mine.” Presented as the penultimate song of their set, frontman Syd Minksy-Sargeant distils this. Grim-faced, his... Read more... |
She Said review - a necessary newsroom thrillerThursday, 24 November 2022
Five years have elapsed since New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey revealed that dozens of women had accused the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse and harassment over three decades. Based on Kantor and Twohey’s book about... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, The Old Vic review - more poignant, and more joyous than everThursday, 24 November 2022
It’s been five years since I saw the Old Vic’s first Christmas Carol, adapted by Jack Thorne and directed by Matthew Warchus, with Rhys Ifans in the lead. It’s since become an annual affair, with a different actor in the lead each year, even... Read more... |
