Reviews
Black Bear review - unexpected knotty treatMonday, 26 April 2021
We’ve all experienced the “fast food film” – enjoyable while we watch it, but realise afterwards it was an empty thrill with little nutritional value. Much rarer is the film that can only be truly appreciated once the credits roll. Black Bear, with... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, RSC, BBC Four review - post-war poise colours a solid productionMonday, 26 April 2021
It has been a hard coming for this RSC Winter’s Tale. Erica Whyman’s production was cancelled by the virus days before its premiere last spring, with plans to stage it in the autumn frustrated by the second lockdown. This broadcast version,... Read more... |
Album: Teenage Fanclub - Endless ArcadeMonday, 26 April 2021
A few hurdles need jumping before grappling with the essence of Teenage Fanclub’s 11th album. Endless Arcade is their first without bassist and founder member Gerard Love. He, alongside Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, was one of the band’s... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Spiritualized - Lazer Guided MelodiesSunday, 25 April 2021
Lazer Guided Melodies was great. It still is. Spiritualized’s debut album built from what was already there in Jason Pierce’s previous band Spacemen 3 and took it into newer, more textured territory. While softer-focussed and more dynamic than... Read more... |
Greig, I Fagiolini online review - poetry and music to redeem a damaged worldSaturday, 24 April 2021
I Fagiolini do not just do choral concerts. Indeed, director Robert Hollingworth claimed in the pre-concert chat, he finds choral concerts boring. Instead what he and his group provide are experiences that go beyond straight recitals, bringing... Read more... |
Michael Spitzer: The Musical Human review - charting our age-old relationship with musicWednesday, 21 April 2021
Music and time each dwell inside the other. And the more you attend to musical sounds, the more complex their temporal entanglements become. Time structures music, rhythmically and in its implied narratives. From outside, we place it in biographical... Read more... |
The Importance of Being Earnest online review - Oscar Wilde updated for the Nando's generationWednesday, 21 April 2021
Oscar Wilde's fabulous play satirised Victorian England and contained a shedload of quotable quips. Now Yasmeen Khan has written an updated and uprooted version, set in the North of England, which takes aim at any number of class and ethnic... Read more... |
Mare of Easttown, Sky Atlantic review - Kate Winslet shines in finely-drawn Pennsylvania mysteryTuesday, 20 April 2021
Read our review of the season finale hereDark family dramas set in unglamorous, unprosperous communities in the north-east of the USA have become a genre unto themselves. One thinks here of the work of writers such as Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by... Read more... |
The Gesualdo Six, St Martin-in-the-Fields online review - perfectly polished polyphonyTuesday, 20 April 2021
For their concert debut at St Martin-in-the-Fields, The Gesualdo Six brought a programme of English motets for the final instalment in the venue's trio of Easter concerts. Having come together for a one-off project in 2014, singing Carlo Gesualdo’s... Read more... |
A Splinter of Ice, Original Theatre Company online review - Graham Greene and Kim Philby are friends reunitedMonday, 19 April 2021
There’s such a genial feel to the pairing of Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer in Ben Brown’s new play that there are moments when we almost forget the weighty historical circumstances that lay behind the long-awaited encounter between two old... Read more... |
Promising Young Woman, Sky Cinema review - Emerald Fennell's brilliant directorial debutMonday, 19 April 2021
After winning a couple of Baftas, and with five nominations at next week’s Oscars, Promising Young Woman comes surging in on the crest of a wave. Emerald Fennell, already known for acting roles in The Crown and Call the Midwife and for showrunning... Read more... |
Album: Field Music - Flat White MoonMonday, 19 April 2021
Although it is not solipsistic, Flat White Moon is Field Music’s most personal, most revealing, warmest-sounding album so far. David and Peter Brewis have opened up. Their ninth studio album together opens with a seeming declaration. “Orion from the... Read more... |
