Reviews
Olivier Guez: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele review - the Nazi who was never foundThursday, 01 September 2022
Bringing Olivier Guez’s novel The Disappearance of Josef Mengele on a beach holiday may seem like an odd choice (such is the lot of a reviewer). This incongruity transformed into something stranger, however, when I learned that the Nazi doctor Josef... Read more... |
Ride, Charing Cross Theatre review - A true story of female empowermentThursday, 01 September 2022
Who tells your story? Something of a theme in new musicals since Hamilton posed the question in those long ago pre-Covid, pre-inflation days. In Ride, the once famous cyclist who had hardly ever ridden a bike, Annie Londonderry, circumvents the... Read more... |
Meeting Gorbachev review - Werner Herzog offers a swansong tributeWednesday, 31 August 2022
You react differently to Meeting Gorbachev knowing that the film’s subject was on occasions brought to its interviews from hospital by ambulance; his interlocutor, Werner Herzog, doesn’t mention that fact, of course, anywhere in the three encounters... Read more... |
Dave Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2022Wednesday, 31 August 2022
The Dave Edinburgh Awards went abroad this year – Australian Sam Campbell won for best show at the Fringe, while American Lara Ricote won best newcomer.Campbell won against strong competition from Seann Walsh, Liz Kingsman, Delightful Sausage, Alfie... Read more... |
Prom 57, Bach Mass in B Minor, OAE, Butt review - passion and precisionTuesday, 30 August 2022
A strong team of musical chefs can blend and spice Bach’s mighty Mass in B Minor in a variety of different ways, and still prepare a feast to savour. We don’t know exactly why Bach felt compelled to bundle his decades of genius into this late... Read more... |
The Capture, Series 2, BBC One review - caught up in the China syndromeTuesday, 30 August 2022
When the first series of The Capture arrived three years ago, theartsdesk liked it so much that we reviewed it three times. Writer-director Ben Chanan had successfully, and addictively, tapped into a secret dystopia of blanket digital surveillance... Read more... |
TUKS Camerata, Voces8 Live from London online review - a diverse choral selectionTuesday, 30 August 2022
The Voces8 Live from London, now in its seventh iteration, has progressed from streaming choral chamber music from an empty studio to an 80-strong visiting choir in a packed Christ Church, Spitalfields. In doing this the festival has retained its... Read more... |
Batiashvili, Philadelphia Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - classy playing, mismatched programmeMonday, 29 August 2022
For the penultimate concert in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s residency at the Edinburgh Festival, the chosen repertoire was evidently considered so obscure that the box office managers didn’t even try to sell any tickets in the Usher Hall’s cavernous... Read more... |
Dope Lemon, O2 Academy, Birmingham review - Australian cosmic cowboys bring the house downMonday, 29 August 2022
The Academy 2 may not be the biggest venue in Birmingham, but it was packed on Friday evening for the first gig of Dope Lemon’s much delayed Rose Pink Cadillac tour – to support an album that was finally released after delays of its own back in... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Swinging Blue Jeans - Feelin’ Better Anthology 1963-1969Sunday, 28 August 2022
In late August 1962, Liverpool’s Swinging Blue Genes were booked to play Hamburg’s Star-Club for the first time. At the opening show of their season, they were booed and the curtain was pulled across them. The audience took against their mix of... Read more... |
Her Way review - turning tricks for her son's sakeSaturday, 27 August 2022
Marie (Laure Calamy), the efficient fortysomething sex worker protagonist of the French drama Her Way, doesn’t have life easy, but she calmly works the badly paid street corners of Strasbourg because she can choose her clients, some of them long-... Read more... |
Prom 52, Kuusisto, Finnish RSO, Collon review - fairytales, folksongs and a soaring larkSaturday, 27 August 2022
Schoolteachers know – even if only the very best can put it into practice – that faced with a noisy classroom you shouldn’t raise your voice, but rather speak quietly. Over recent Proms seasons audience coughing has reached extreme levels, so the... Read more... |
