Reviews
Big Thief, Eventim Apollo review - flashes of brillianceSaturday, 29 February 2020
Big Thief’s show promised that particular brand of raw singing and perfect guitarmanship that only they can provide, something which they presented with a playful, earnest charm. Adrianne Lenker shared the stage with her three bandmates, two other... Read more... |
Denis and Katya, Music Theatre Wales / Uproar, Rafferty review - disturbing the untroubled monotony of South Wales musicSaturday, 29 February 2020
Once upon a time writing an opera was first and foremost a question of choosing a good story. But times move on, and today – as Nicholas Till reminds us in a fascinating programme note for Philip Venables’s and Ted Huffman’s new chamber opera – the... Read more... |
Sinners, Playground Theatre review - intimacy but also fearSaturday, 29 February 2020
Layla is trapped in a pit of sand up to her shoulders, with a shroud over her head and piles of rocks surrounding her. On steps Nur, who has been tasked with arranging the rocks. The two were engaged in an adulterous affair, and he must begin the... Read more... |
Portrait of a Lady on Fire review – love unshackledFriday, 28 February 2020
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is windblown, spare, taut, and sensual – a haunted seaside romantic drama, set in the 18th century, that makes most recent films and series dressed in period costumes seem like party-line effusions of empty style and... Read more... |
David Hockney: Drawing from Life, National Portrait Gallery review - an anatomy of loveFriday, 28 February 2020
For David Hockney, drawing is born out of familiarity: his portraits both express and fulfil the urge to know someone deeply and well. In his 60-year career, he has returned again and again to those closest to him, drawing them often enough that... Read more... |
Hallé, Elder, Gernon, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, review - fiery Beethoven tributeFriday, 28 February 2020
Honouring Beethoven in Manchester is a united enterprise, at least between the Hallé and BBC Philharmonic, two symphony orchestras that have worked out a series of Beethoven specials between them. Last night’s Hallé concert even had two conductors... Read more... |
Berlinale 2020: Never Rarely Sometimes Always review - raw and unflinching abortion drama hits homeFriday, 28 February 2020
Back in 2017, writer-director Eliza Hittman won over audiences with her beautiful coming-of-age drama Beach Rats. Her latest film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, is a more quietly devastating drama, shifting the focus away from sexual... Read more... |
Women Beware Women, Shakespeare's Globe, review – wittily toxic upgrade of a Jacobean tragedyFriday, 28 February 2020
This raunchy, gleefully cynical production takes one of Thomas Middleton’s most famous tragedies and turns it into a Netflix-worthy dark comedy. Where the themes of incest, betrayal, cougar-action and multiple murder would be spun out over several... Read more... |
Dark Waters review - an ominous drama with plenty of backbone, but not enough fleshFriday, 28 February 2020
Watching Dark Waters, the latest film from director Todd Haynes (Carol, Far from Heaven), I kept thinking — what’s the opposite of a love letter? The film is based on the work of Rob Bilott, a real-life lawyer who uncovered a corruption scandal so... Read more... |
Grosvenor, Park, Ridout, Soltani, QEH review - inspired collegiality at the highest levelFriday, 28 February 2020
Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss are not the composers you'd hear at a typical chamber music concert. Their early efforts at piano quartets made up the first half of an evening at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with Benjamin Grosvenor and friends that... Read more... |
Ahir Shah, West End Centre, Aldershot review - a millennial's existential angstFriday, 28 February 2020
Ahir Shah has delivered some very good comedy by performing as a man who knows he is right about everything – that's what a political degree from Cambridge can do for you. But now the comic, rightly lauded for his previous polemicist shows with two... Read more... |
Berlinale 2020: Berlin Alexanderplatz review - a contemporary twist on a classicThursday, 27 February 2020
Burhan Qurbani isn’t the first director to bring Alfred Döblin’s seminal 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, to the screen. First, there was the Weimar Republic era adaptation that Döblin himself worked on. Fifty years later, Rainer Werner... Read more... |
