Reviews
Kim Hye-jin: Concerning My Daughter review - room for complicationFriday, 27 May 2022
In this best-selling Korean novella, recently translated into English by Jamie Chang, Kim Hye-jin offers us the perspective of a Korean mother. It’s narrated entirely from the perspective of a woman of around 60 who has a daughter in her thirties... Read more... |
Prehistoric Planet, Apple TV+ review - David Attenborough presents life on earth, 66 million years agoThursday, 26 May 2022
With Jurassic World: Dominion due in June, which will mark the end of the “Jurassic” movie franchise, here’s Apple TV’s alternative, science-based history of dinosaurs and their world. It’s produced by Jon Favreau, a key player in the Marvel... Read more... |
Das Boot, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - submarine warfare finds new horizonsWednesday, 25 May 2022
The challenge for the makers of Das Boot is to keep finding new ways to move the show forwards and outwards without losing touch with its foundations in World War Two submarine warfare.This wasn’t a problem faced by Wolfgang Petersen when he made... Read more... |
Legally Blonde, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - a joyous Gen-Z musical makeoverWednesday, 25 May 2022
The 2001 Reese Witherspoon-starring film Legally Blonde, upon which Heather Hach, Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin’s peppy Broadway musical is based, was something of a Trojan horse: a bubblegum-pink comedy with a feminist spine.Now Lucy Moss, co-... Read more... |
Wigmore Soloists, Wigmore Hall review - superb JanáčekWednesday, 25 May 2022
Wigmore Soloists is such a good idea, and still at an early stage of its development. The group brings together top players to perform the wider chamber music repertoire, normally septets and upwards. The hall also gives the players a place they can... Read more... |
Bliss, Finborough Theatre review - bleak but tenderWednesday, 25 May 2022
When Bliss, a new play adapted from an Andrei Platonov short story by Fraser Grace, made its debut in Russia in early 2020, Cambridge-based company Menagerie were told that their production was “very Russian”.I’m no expert on Russian culture, but I... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - fabulous singing and a classy productionTuesday, 24 May 2022
After two years of Covid-affected performances – even though there was a full season last year – Glyndebourne's annual festival is finally back in full glory. Following the big blaze of Saturday's The Wreckers, Sunday welcomed back Michael Grandage'... Read more... |
Cornelia Parker, Tate Britain review – divine intelligenceMonday, 23 May 2022
Cornelia Parker’s early installations are as fresh and as thought provoking as when they were made. Her Tate Britain retrospective opens with Thirty Pieces of Silver (pictured below left: Detail). It’s more than 30 years since she ran over a... Read more... |
Alyn Shipton: On Jazz - A Personal Journey - digging jazz deeply and musicallyMonday, 23 May 2022
“I suppose you’re going to ask all the usual questions...?” When Keith Jarrett was interviewed by Alyn Shipton for the very first time, the pianist, who could often be tetchy in such situations, clearly had low expectations. Deftly, Shipton asked... Read more... |
Lotus Beauty, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review – uneasy mix of comedy and tragedyMonday, 23 May 2022
Theatre is slowly recovering from the effects of the pandemic, and many shows which were cancelled because of the first lockdown are now finally getting a staging. The latest is Satinder Chohan’s Lotus Beauty, her loving portrait of a Punjabi family... Read more... |
The Wreckers, Glyndebourne review - no masterpiece, but vividly sung and playedSunday, 22 May 2022
Interesting for the history of music, but not for music? Passing acquaintance with Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers, a grand opera by a woman at a time (the early 1900s) when circumstances made such a thing near-impossible, had suggested so. Then along... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Patty Waters - You Loved MeSunday, 22 May 2022
“Touched by Rodin in a Paris Museum” is a 14-minute consideration of exactly what its title says: the impact of encountering Auguste Rodin’s work in person. The composition features piano only. There are nods to Debussy and Ravel. The playing is... Read more... |
