Reviews
Jenny Gilbert
Filmmakers Powell and Pressburger were not the first to portray ballet dancing as a fatal obsession and choreographer Matthew Bourne won’t be the last, but the latter’s 2016 stage adaptation of The Red Shoes, Powell's 1948 film (now most famous as a favourite of Martin Scorsese), looks set for longevity nonetheless. Deftly invoking the postwar European dance scene and bringing sharp definition to the film’s plot and characters, the show brims with added entertaining detail. Hurtling to its dénouement, it also undercuts the film by half an hour.Bourne’s production, as in the film, follows the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The National Theatre has a long record of starry revivals so this version of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, with a cast led by Nicola Coughlan (yes, from Derry Girls and Bridgerton), quickens the heartbeats of anticipation, although audience reaction won’t be anything like that of the play’s 1907 premiere. That Dublin production caused nationalist protests from a riotous public who felt insulted by the playwright’s realistic portrayal of the Irish peasantry as lonely drunks, and by its theme of patricide and its image of female underwear. Sinn Féin founder Arthur Read more ...
Gary Naylor
That young person sitting next to you on the bus, earbuds wedged in, an enigmatic, Mona Lisa-ish smile on their face - are they listening to a podcast? If so, is it one of many, many such concerning True Crime, a genre that has moved out of the WH Smith’s magazine shelf with the National Enquirer and the large print section of the library, and into a much more youthful market in the 2020s? Chances are that it is.I can’t be too precious about it, numbering Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon books amongst my favourites about showbiz and sneaking a peek, as a very guilty pleasure, at Wikipedia’s Read more ...
Justine Elias
For everyone who thinks that the country house drama ought to be spelled without the "o", there's Fackham Hall, an energetic satire of all things Downton Abbey, Bridgerton, and even Agatha Christie. It arrives the same year that its main target, Downton Abbey, launched its "Grand Finale" movie. Surely we haven't seen the last of the Golden Age-set costume dramas that paint such a beguiling picture of the Great Depression: the genre is the lifeblood of the BBC. And what else would we do on a Sunday night?Written by sketch comedy veterans the Dawson Bros. and real-life brothers Jimmy and Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Of all the problems a band could face, fighting for room onstage with a Christmas tree must be far down the list of possibilities. Yet there was David "Jaff" Craig struggling to find room to move around, while avoiding knocking over the decoration next to him with an errant swing of his bass. It was the Futureheads own fault though, as both their current album and tour have a festive theme, hence the choice of two large trees on either side of the band.Some of the crowd had taken this theme to heart, with Christmas jumpers and Santa hats worn, suggesting a works night out had wandered into Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The village of Cesinova has the largest white stork population in Macedonia; every chimney and steeple is festooned with the scruffy nests of these enormous birds. We see the flock arriving in spring to reclaim their nesting spots. Perched on a huge mound of twigs and leaves, each pair settles in by tossing back their long necks and clattering their beaks in greeting.Once the eggs have been laid and the chicks hatched, the hard work begins; but the timing is perfect. The farmers are just beginning to plough their fields and we see the storks gobbling up any frogs, mice and snakes escaping the Read more ...
James Saynor
Hell has no fury like a stan scorned, as an Eminem song memorably established with respect to obsessed fanboys in the pop world, and this visually nimble not-quite-thriller shows us the further perils of celebrity disciples who get the hump.Britain’s Archie Madekwe plays Oliver, an up-and-coming music artist in LA, provider of pleasurable late-century-influenced pop and surrounded by the usual crew of Gen Z mates and loafers. In a clever opening scene, he gloms onto a nervous, shifty, college-dodging worker in a clothes store, and somehow the gulf in power and personality between them makes Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Fire and ice are the elements invoked at the start of Handel’s remarkable opera of jealousy and betrayal, yet what gives it its power is the world of subtlety and shadow that lies between them. In Jetske Mijnssen’s dynamic, darkly witty directorial debut at the Royal Opera House, she creates a canvas on which each character’s contradictions can be felt to the full, capturing every nuance of their rapturous highs and sonorous lows. As several accounts testify, this opera was created specifically to be performed in 1735 at the new Covent Garden Theatre, which would eventually be replaced Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This album truly is a delightful surprise. Winter Songs Vol. 2 is simply more fun, it swings harder and is filled with far more freshness than I could ever have expected. There will always be people keen to tell you that Nat King Cole and Rosemary Clooney said all that needed to be said about the American Songbook Christmas standards several decades ago. But they’re wrong. In this, the most potentially tired of all genre niches, Ohio-born, New York-based jazz singer April Varner and her cohort of singers and instrumentalists really have found some magic dust to sprinkle over every number. Read more ...
Robert Beale
From the team who gave us a sparkly L’étoile just a year ago, comes a fun-filled production of Prokofiev’s wacky, surreal and glorious comedy romp. The Love for Three Oranges requires a cast line-up that could prove daunting to many a professional company (Opera North triumphed with it in 1988 but haven’t done it since), but this is precisely where the Royal Northern College of Music have all the cards – and this year in particular they’re playing from strength.It's not just that they have the numbers in their technical team (I thought 20 names in the credits last year was impressive Read more ...
Justine Elias
Fear of being alone with our own thoughts, as much as fear of missing out, prevents most of us from disconnecting from our electronic devices and braving even a few hours in total darkness. For a brave assortment of teenagers, though, the task of unplugging from social media – and reconnecting with their still-developing minds – is a year-long journey into the wilderness and back. Folktales, the new documentary from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, explores the Norwegian Folk School movement, which began in the mid-1840s as a way to bring education to rural children. Now the folk schools Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
It seldom happens that you long to hear choral music not in a modern auditorium but some chilly, echoing cavern of a great Victorian town hall. But that thought did arise as a full-strength London Symphony Orchestra and its hundred-strong chorus crammed uncomfortably into every inch of the Barbican hall’s stage for Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem. It felt like squeezing a herd of elephants into a cake tin, and the Barbican’s disobliging acoustic hardly helped enrich the mood. Yet Antonio Pappano still managed to work the uplifting magic that he reliably brings to choral blockbusters Read more ...