Reviews
Das Rheingold, Longborough Festival Opera review - more Wagnerian excellence in a Gloucestershire barnThursday, 06 June 2019
The whole raison d’être of the Longborough Festival was always the performance of its founder Martin Graham’s beloved Wagner. So it’s perfectly natural that the twelfth anniversary of the start of the festival’s original Ring cycle should be marked... Read more... |
Education, Education, Education, Trafalgar Studios review - politics and pupils, mayhem and musicThursday, 06 June 2019
It's the 2nd May 1997, the morning after the night that swept New Labour into power. We’re in the staffroom of a school somewhere in Britain and the teachers are jubilant. They've been glued to their TV sets for the results and have shagged and... Read more... |
Gloria Bell review - dancing away the heartacheThursday, 06 June 2019
With Gloria (2013), A Fantastic Woman (2017) and Disobedience (2018), Chile’s Sebastián Lelio has earned a deserved reputation as a sympathetic director of women. It may seem a strange move for him to remake Gloria only a few years after the Spanish... Read more... |
The Virtues, Episode 4, Channel 4 review - a bitter redemptionWednesday, 05 June 2019
Shane Meadows has said that he always wanted to make a film where people didn’t talk. It’s homage to the European cinema he loves, with its preference for atmosphere over action, ambiguity over resolution, but it is also a way to confront an... Read more... |
Frank Bowling, Tate Britain review - a marvelWednesday, 05 June 2019
In a photograph taken in 1962, Frank Bowling leans against a fireplace in his studio. His right hand rests on the mantlepiece which bears books, fixative and spirit bottles, his left rests out of sight on the small of his back. His attire is... Read more... |
63 Up, ITV review - age is beginning to wither themWednesday, 05 June 2019
The first film in this extraordinary series, Seven Up!, was made for Granada Television’s World in Action in 1964. It picked 14 seven-year-old British children from different social backgrounds, aiming to revisit them every seven years to see how... Read more... |
Manon Lescaut, Opera Holland Park review - attempt to empower commodified woman falls flatWednesday, 05 June 2019
"Waiting is always wearisome," declare the socialites as glitter-and-be-gay Manon Lescaut receives in the home of her nasty old "protector" Geronte. Despite the numerous sugar-plums Puccini weaves into his first fluent operatic masterpiece, waiting... Read more... |
Wife, Kiln Theatre review - queer epic is joyful and intenseWednesday, 05 June 2019
In one lifetime, the many loves that once dare not speak their names have become part of everyday chatter. But it would be shortsighted to believe that ancient prejudices are easy to overcome, or that change does not run the risk of creating... Read more... |
Natalia Goncharova, Tate Modern review - a prodigious talentWednesday, 05 June 2019
The times they are a-changin’. On show at the Barbican is a retrospective of Lee Krasner’s stunning paintings and, for the first time ever, Tate Modern is hosting two major shows of women artists. At last, the achievements of great women are... Read more... |
Kuusisto, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Birmingham Town Hall review - aural voyage through spaceWednesday, 05 June 2019
It’s quite a weighty concept, and one which could easily have buckled had both the music and its execution not been of the highest quality. Aurora Orchestra’s "Music of the Spheres" was a concert inspired by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras’s theory... Read more... |
Her Majesty's Cavalry, ITV review - my kingdom for a horseWednesday, 05 June 2019
If you should happen to be loitering in London’s Knightsbridge at 4am, don’t panic if you find yourself surrounded by the massed horsemen of the Household Cavalry. When they need to rehearse for great occasions like the Queen’s birthday, they can... Read more... |
San Francisco Ballet, Liang/Marston/Pita, Sadler's Wells - elemental, ethereal and kitschy, tooTuesday, 04 June 2019
Sun, snow, and some unadorned silliness danced to the music of Björk: no one can accuse San Francisco of casting an insufficiently wide tonal (or climatic) net in this second of four programmes on view from San Francisco Ballet as part of their... Read more... |
