Reviews
The End of Eddy, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - powerful but lacking compassionTuesday, 23 August 2022![]() Those working-class people really are appalling, aren’t they? Racist, sexist, definitely homophobic, violent too. Thank god our young hero can escape their clutches into the safety of a nice, bourgeois acting academy where he can be his true self.... Read more... |
Van der Valk, Series 2 Finale, ITV review - sleaze, corruption and skulduggery in AmsterdamMonday, 22 August 2022![]() Despite the jarring effect of having British actors speaking colloquial English while purporting to be Dutch policemen working in Amsterdam, the second series of ITV’s Van der Valk arrived at its third and final episode feeling as if it had reached... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2022 review: The StonesMonday, 22 August 2022![]() In many ways, The Stones is what the Fringe is all about: a new theatre company (London-based Signal House); a single actor; a small black-box space; just a chair, a bit of smoke and some almost imperceptible lighting changes for a staging. And with... Read more... |
Stagg, Australian World Orchestra, Mehta, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - Antipodeans with a global soundMonday, 22 August 2022![]() The Edinburgh International Festival is playing its part in the UK/Australia Season 2021-22 (no, me neither) by hosting this concert from the Australian World Orchestra. It’s comprised of Australian musicians who play in orchestras across Europe and... Read more... |
Album: Ezra Furman - All of Us FlamesMonday, 22 August 2022![]() The third track of All Of Us Flames is titled “Dressed in Black.” Its protagonist “come[s] to me by night beneath my window sill…you leave before the sun comes up. Haunted eyes, you’ve got those haunted eyes.” Though tortured, this relationship... Read more... |
Anaïs in Love review - she wants what she wantsSunday, 21 August 2022![]() It’s 2022’s art-house image du jour – a self-absorbed 30-year-old running to get what she wants, irrespective of the long-term consequences to herself or anyone else.Watching the pell-mell scurry of Anaïs Demoustier’s title character in Anaïs in... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Lou Reed - Words & Music, May 1965Sunday, 21 August 2022![]() Lou Reed went to the Baldwin, New York post office on 11 May 1965 to mail himself a five-inch reel-to-reel tape with 11 recording of songs he had written. The sealed package was registered and stamped, and also signed with that date by a local... Read more... |
The Feast review - slow-cooking folk-horrorSaturday, 20 August 2022![]() Lee Haven Jones’ Welsh-language folk-horror debut dissects a family’s treachery to the land in eventually apocalyptic fashion. It starts in silent, jagged style, the characters seeming as artificial as their minimalist house, abstract paintings and... Read more... |
Prom 43, Solomon, The English Concert, Jeannin review - a Handelian box of delightsSaturday, 20 August 2022![]() Like many people, I grew up with cut-and-paste Handel. It could take decades before you found out where that shiny snippet of a childhood earworm truly belonged.A full-length Solomon, for instance – as delivered by The English Concert with a luxury... Read more... |
Better Call Saul, Season 6 Finale, Netflix review - end of the line for TV's most celebrated con artistFriday, 19 August 2022![]() It was the end of an era, as Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s bittersweet epic of the brilliantly devious Saul Goodman wound to a close. Hints of redemption were in the air, signalled by Saul reverting at last to his real name, James McGill. A... Read more... |
Prom 42, Lisiecki, BBC Scottish SO, Dausgaard review - concerto partnership made in heavenFriday, 19 August 2022![]() Sibelius or Nielsen symphonies? Last night, with the Finn’s Seventh in the first half and the Dane’s “Inextinguishable” (No. 4) in the second, choice should have been impossible. Francesco Piemontesi or Jan Lisiecki? I’d have been equally happy with... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Joseph Parsons / Njambi McGrath / Josh JonesFriday, 19 August 2022![]() Joseph Parsons, The Mash House ★★★Joseph Parsons is wearing a Bristol City shirt for Equaliser, which is about being a gay man who loves football. Actually, he loves most sports – he's the kind of guy who will set his alarm to watch curling... Read more... |
