Reviews
The Apostles, LPO, Brabbins, RFH review - Elgar's melancholy New Testament snapshotsMonday, 28 October 2019
The Apostles is a depressing work, mostly in a good way. Elgar's one good aspirational theme of mystic chordal progressions is easily outnumbered by a phantasmal parade of dying falls, hauntingly shaped and orchestrated. After The Dream of Gerontius... Read more... |
Sunn O))), The Crossing, Birmingham review – ambient metallists bring the noiseMonday, 28 October 2019
Sunn O))) must have been on stage at The Crossing for a fair few minutes before anyone from the capacity audience realised they were there. Bathed in a thick fog of dry ice, initially all that could be seen were the power-on lights of the band’s... Read more... |
Lenny Henry, Watford Colosseum review - enjoyable evening with genial hostMonday, 28 October 2019
It’s a long time since Lenny Henry performed live comedy, and a lot has happened in that interval. He has reinvented himself as a serious actor on stage and screen, become a spokesman for the black British experience, was knighted in 2015 and is now... Read more... |
Jung Chang: Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister review – China's century in three women's livesSunday, 27 October 2019
In 1930, a couple of romantically involved Chinese expats in Berlin – both revolutionaries in their own way – went on a farewell date. One of them, Deng Yan-da, was due to return home to continue his clandestine political work. The pair saw Marlene... Read more... |
Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits, Royal Academy review - mesmerising intensitySunday, 27 October 2019
Lucian Freud died in 2011 after a career spanning some 70 odd years. Over the decades, he painted and drew himself repeatedly, creating a fascinating portrait of a man who spent an inordinate amount of time scrutinising himself and others.One of the... Read more... |
Sarah Hall: Sudden Traveller review - lyrical and luminousSunday, 27 October 2019
Movement, flight, searching, the quest for a destination: as its title might suggest, Sarah Hall’s latest story collection Sudden Traveller is preoccupied with journeys of one kind or another. From the Cumbrian moors to a city in the near East, a... Read more... |
Chantal Ackerman: My Mother Laughs review - too umbilically linked?Sunday, 27 October 2019
My Mother Laughs was first published in Chantal Ackerman’s native French in 2013. This year it has been translated into English for the first time, twice. Silver Press’ elegant version is framed by a foreword by the poet, Eileen Myles (who also has... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The RaincoatsSunday, 27 October 2019
Rough Trade’s first album was Stiff Little Fingers’s Inflammable Material. The label followed up its February 1979 release with Swell Maps’s A Trip to Marineville, The Raincoats’s eponymous debut, Cabaret Voltaire’s Mix-Up and Essential Logic’s Beat... Read more... |
The Last Black Man in San Francisco review - gentle gentrification bluesSunday, 27 October 2019
San Francisco has rarely looked more unattainably golden than in Joe Talbot’s Sundance prize-winning gentrification parable. Jimmie (Jimmie Fails) once belonged inside the city’s Californian Dream, symbolised for him by the grand Victorian-style... Read more... |
Pose, Series 2, BBC Two review - satisfying return for one of TV's most triumphant dramasSaturday, 26 October 2019
Pose offers something that is really rare in the TV world: it’s a show that manages to be both darkly sombre and completely uplifting. The drama, which is about New York City’s 1980s ball culture, focuses on the lives of trans women and gay men... Read more... |
Hannah Gadsby, Royal Festival Hall review - simply magnificentSaturday, 26 October 2019
It's a wonderful thing when a talented comic goes from niche performer to international star almost overnight, and that's what happened to Australian stand-up Hannah Gadsby. In 2017, she announced that her award-winning Edinburgh Fringe show,... Read more... |
Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall review - a match made in heavenSaturday, 26 October 2019
This recital finds Angela Hewitt nearing the end of her “Bach Odyssey”, a project to perform all of Bach’s keyboard works, in five cities around the world, between 2016 and 2020. That’s an impressive feat, especially as she performs from memory.... Read more... |
