Reviews
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Orpheus / Bottom / BackupFriday, 17 August 2018
Orpheus ★★★★ This unashamedly sentimental storytelling show got its premiere a couple of years back in the back garden of a cheese shop in Cromarty, before touring the Scottish Highlands, we’re told. With its lo-fi, minimalist... Read more... |
Disenchantment, Netflix review - Matt Groening show has promise after poor startFriday, 17 August 2018
It’s an event that only comes around once a generation: a new Matt Groening TV series. The Simpsons is rightly regarded as one of the greatest shows ever made. It changed the face of American television, and 10 years later was followed Futurama, a... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2018 reviews: Rosie Jones/ Marcus Brigstocke/ Alice SneddenFriday, 17 August 2018
Rosie Jones ★★★★There are two versions of Rosie Jones, she tells us; one nice, one not so nice. And who knows which of those would have won the battle of psyches if the comic had not been deprived of oxygen for a quarter of an hour during birth, she... Read more... |
Emilia, Shakespeare's Globe review - polemic disguised as a playThursday, 16 August 2018
It feels like Michelle Terry’s first summer season at the Globe has been building up to Emilia for a while now. The theme is Shakespeare and race, so Othello was something of a given. It's joined by The Winter’s Tale, as if the Emilias of these two... Read more... |
The Guardians review - beautifully crafted dramaThursday, 16 August 2018
A slow tracking shot over the gassed corpses of soldiers, their masks having failed the ecstasy of fumbling, opens The Guardians. This French art house film would perhaps have been better served by the English title The Caretakers; it's... Read more... |
Prom 44, Gringytė, CBSO, Morlot review - eloquently sculpted Gallic richesThursday, 16 August 2018
This should have been the third much-anticipated Prom of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's inspiring communicator-in-chief Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. She's now on maternity leave. So those of us who hadn't experienced Ludovic Morlot live before... Read more... |
Prom 43, Batiashvili, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Barenboim review – from Russia with loveWednesday, 15 August 2018
The days are long gone when a Proms gig by Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra felt like a life-changing visitation by a major prophet. Expectations of the ensemble he and the scholar-writer Edward Said founded in 1999 to encourage... Read more... |
On the Edge, Channel 4, review - fast and furious new dramasWednesday, 15 August 2018
Television drama is living through a golden age, yes, but one thing mainly absent from the vast choice available on terrestrial and streaming broadcasters alike is the short story. Short dramas used to be a regular fixture on television, when... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2018: Luisa Omielan/ Brennan Reece/ Olga KochWednesday, 15 August 2018
Luisa Omielan ★★★★Luisa Omiela, a confirmed party girl, is the first to admit she used to hate politics, and had difficulty in working out the difference between Conservative and Labour (well, that goes for most people these days, but we'll let that... Read more... |
Prom 42, Buniatishvili, Estonian Festival Orchestra, Järvi review – bright lights from the NorthTuesday, 14 August 2018
Music-lovers who normally balk at the sight of national colours in a concert hall would surely have forgiven the little Estonian flags – in stripes of blue, black and white – that waved happily at the conclusion of this Prom. Under the baton of... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Nigel Slater's Toast / StatusTuesday, 14 August 2018
Nigel Slater's Toast ★★★★ “It’s impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you,” says Sam Newton’s eager, nine-year-old Nigel, in Henry Filloux-Bennett’s fluent stage adaptation of Nigel Slater’s 2003 memoir. And in... Read more... |
Prom 40, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bell review - tea-time treats with wit and dashMonday, 13 August 2018
When did this weird mix-tape fashion take root at the Proms? Just a couple of days after Antonio Pappano ran Haydn into Bernstein without pausing for breath, Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields sought to splice the final yearning... Read more... |
