Reviews
Sea Star: Sean Scully, National Gallery review - analysing past mastersTuesday, 23 April 2019
Either side of a doorway, framing a view of Turner’s The Evening Star, c. 1830 (Main picture), Sean Scully’s Landline Star, 2017, and Landline Pool, 2018, frankly acknowledge their roots. Abstract as they are, Scully’s horizontal bands of... Read more... |
Sleaford Mods, Dreamland, Margate review - musical news from broken Brexit landMonday, 22 April 2019
Sleaford Mods are livid. About everything. But then, aren’t we all? If any single voice could represent this particularly bewildering era, it would be Jason Williamson’s. Outraged, marginalised, furious, he’s determinedly (with the help of henchman... Read more... |
World War Z review - bloodthirsty fun with the zombie apocalypseMonday, 22 April 2019
Based on the 2006 book of the same name, and set in the same universe as the 2013 film adaptation, World War Z follows groups of survivors of a zombie apocalypse in the cities of Moscow, New York, Jerusalem, and Tokyo. The game unleashes hundreds of... Read more... |
Britney, Soho Theatre review - finding the funny in a brain tumourMonday, 22 April 2019
A brain tumour isn't usually the subject of a comedy show but Britney, written and performed by comedy duo Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson, is just that. It's “the true story of what happens to two best friends when one of them [Clive] gets a brain... Read more... |
Banine: Days in the Caucasus review - revolutions, pogroms and loveSunday, 21 April 2019
By fifteen Ummulbanu Asadullayeva — or Banine, to call her by the name under which she wrote and translated — had already lived more than most of us will in a lifetime. She’d experienced great love, married, been both a refugee and returnee,... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Terry AllenSunday, 21 April 2019
Torso Hell tells the story of an American soldier whose limbs were blown off in Vietnam. Amazingly, he and his buddies survived, and in the ensuing medical chaos his arms and legs were re-attached to them rather than him. The narrator says “At the... Read more... |
Brockes-Passion, AAM, Egarr, Barbican review - fleshly Handel for our earthbound timesSaturday, 20 April 2019
Whips, scourges, sinews, blood and pus: where Bach’s two Passions lament from a contemplative distance, Handel’s plunges right to the bone, to the cruel, tortured death that is the heart of the Easter story.Perhaps that explains the work’s recent... Read more... |
SS Mendi: Dancing the Death Drill, Isango Ensemble, Linbury Theatre - evocative and essential lyric theatreSaturday, 20 April 2019
While Bach's and Handel's Passions have been driving thousands to contemplate suffering, mortality and grace, this elegy for black lives lost over a century ago also chimes movingly with pre-Easter offerings. First seen in Southampton last year as a... Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Ex Cathedra, Skidmore, Symphony Hall Birmingham - powerful, poignant BachSaturday, 20 April 2019
For the final instalment of their three Matthew Passions this Holy Week, Ex Cathedra gave a large scale performance of Bach’s oratorio in their home town on Birmingham, after dates with lesser forces in London and Bristol. With an augmented... Read more... |
Red Joan review - Judi Dench can't lift lumbering espionage dramaSaturday, 20 April 2019
The decades-long stage relationship between Judi Dench and Trevor Nunn translates to surprisingly little with Red Joan. This is veteran theatre director Nunn's first film since Twelfth Night in 1996. Top-billed in a supporting role, Dench brings her... Read more... |
Take That, SSE Hydro, Glasgow review - capes and cameos in 30th anniversary spectacularFriday, 19 April 2019
This year, says Gary Barlow, marks 30 years since five boys walked into a room in Manchester and auditioned for what would turn out to be the UK’s most successful pop act. It is fitting, then, that what they are billing as the Odyssey tour features... Read more... |
Climate Change: The Facts, BBC One review - how much reality can humankind bear?Friday, 19 April 2019
Peer down the glassy dark and you’ll see them. White bubbles trapped in the frozen lake which appear to be rising to the surface. Look through the permafrost this way and you’re seeing into the past: as the ice melts, gas which was captured and... Read more... |
