Reviews
Robert Beale
There are enough historical reasons for differing approaches to Handel’s Messiah to allow every conductor to produce, effectively, their own edition. American conductor Jeannette Sorrell gave the Hallé audience a streamlined, power-driven one that had them on their feet at the end as well as during the Hallelujah Chorus.The main reasons for that were undoubtedly the precision attack and dynamic strength of the Hallé Choir’s singing – most of them doing it without the book (and choral director Matthew Hamilton got one of the biggest cheers as he took his bow) – and the exciting and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The opening track initially seems straightforward. To begin “Sons of Art,” Michael Garrick runs up and down his piano keyboard. Norma Winstone adds wordless vocals which weave in and out of his sparkling arpeggios. Then, the bass arrives. Drums kick in. So do the tenor sax and trumpet. After a climax around the two-minute mark, what begins as pacific turns turbulent. The conventional has become unpredictably experimental.To conclude the album, an extraordinary nine-minute piece which, on one hand, sounds like dawn breaking and, on the other, a collision between the contrapuntal and a free- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Among the many versions of America on parade in the ever-expanding universe of Taylor Sheridan, the one portrayed in Mayor of Kingstown is surely the bleakest. As AI helpfully informs us: “The show offers little respite, depicting extreme violence, moral ambiguity, and systemic failure without much sugarcoating.”Yet the longer it goes on, the more addictive it becomes. Now in the middle of season 4, the show continues to tighten its tendrils of menace, thuggery and corruption with seemingly no concern for the viewer’s delicate sensibilities. Much of its allure stems from its impeccable Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident is a shattering absurdist anti-caper – a kind of minimalist take on It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World inspired by Iran’s ongoing tragedy. His country's top director and one of the sharpest thorns in the Islamic Republic’s regime, Panahi was promoting his Palme’ d’Or-winner in New York last Monday when Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced him to a year’s imprisonment for “propagandia activities”. He’s also banned from overseas travel for two years and from joining social and political organisations. The Supreme Leader and his judges Read more ...
David Nice
Would it be possible to get to the end of the year without hearing a single Bruckner symphony live? I’d reckoned without the presence in Dublin of fabulous conductor Anja Bihlmaier, whose 2022 concert with the National Symphony of Ireland was a fine introduction to the thriving concert scene here, and of Boris Giltburg, one of the most engaging living pianists, in Mozart (and a far from insubstantial Schumann encore). Besides, Bruckner’s Ninth gives the lie more than any of the others to any settled spirituality or faith. Here the smoke-into-fire coda of the first movement and the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Zum Roten Igel – the “Red Hedgehog Tavern” – was a concert venue with pub attached in 19th century Vienna, frequented by the like of Schubert and Brahms. It is also the name of an ensemble committed to exploring the connections between these “classical” composers and the Volkisch music that would have been heard in the next-door room. In this case it means re-scoring Schubert’s String Quintet and garlanding it with wild interstitial dance jams, recreating an imaginary historical mash-up.It is a Marmite project, with a full Purcell Room seeing several people leave during proceedings Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
As reports come in of theatre audiences behaving badly, slumped drunkenly in the aisles, gorging on noisy food and wrestling with their latest smartphones, it’s refreshing to see that kind of behaviour safely onstage, and played for big laughs. Surprisingly, perhaps, this mayhem comes courtesy of Noel Coward.The redoutable Menier has found another gem to polish after Nancy Carroll’s superb revival of Pinero’s The Cabinet Minister and its exuberant The Producers: a 100th birthday edition of Noel Coward’s Fallen Angels. Roundly denounced for its vulgarity and loose morals at its debut, the Read more ...
Robert Beale
You have to admire Samantha Fernando’s concept of the “To Do” list. Hers has one item: “Do Less”. That’s the subtitle of one section of the new work, Wintering, for which she wrote both words and music.It was heard for the first time in the North of England last night in a concert by four voices of the Marian Consort and a Manchester Collective string quartet (the premiere was at the Wigmore Hall last week).Oddly enough, there’s nothing about winter in the evocation of a guided meditation, with a soprano voice speaking the random thoughts actually going on in the head of a participant, which Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It's not easy witnessing your own death. But that's the situation in which we find the lyricist Lorenz Hart at the start of Blue Moon, Richard Linklater's startling film about a creative maverick who is well aware that his own shining star is on the wane. Boasting longtime Linklater collaborator Ethan Hawke in his finest screen performance since this same director's Boyhood, the movie casts an unsparing glance at a great talent run amok even as it offers Hawke a renewed shot at the Oscar that has so far eluded him. (Hawke's last nomination, in fact, was for Boyhood 11 years ago.) Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
According to legend, Glasgow can be a tough place for a support band a crowd do not warm to. Therefore brotherly duo Faux Real were perhaps taking a risk when they elected to bound into the audience during the first number in their Wet Leg support slot. It was greeted with mostly puzzlement from early attendees, but when they repeated the trick 30 minutes later - finding space and sprinting towards each other before jumping into the air with high kicks - the reaction was much more enthusiastic. The pair had mixed up synth-heavy pop of varying quality with relentless, hard working Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Hail the spirit of the dance. And of acting. And of driving and flying. At a time when new writing is clearly in decline, and the most successful shows are adaptations or revivals of the classics, the National Theatre returns to one of its big hits from a year ago, thrillingly recast. Unsurprisingly, it’s an adaptation of a popular book of yesteryear: Kendall Feaver’s version of Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild’s classic 1936 coming-of-age novel about three adopted sisters who go to drama school. Set in a fossil-filled crumbling house in Cromwell Road, the plot is about the absent-minded Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It’s good to have the old gang back together in An Evening With The Fast Show, more than 30 years since The Fast Show debuted on the BBC. And if many in the audience attending with parents, or even grandparents, weren’t yet born during the sketch show’s run from 1994 to 1997, they are testament to its longevity – and how good catchphrases can live for ever.Catchphrases were the show’s stock in trade, along with memorable characters, fast edits and lots of sketches in each episode. Paul Whitehouse, co-creator of The Fast Show, explains self-deprecatingly the high sketch count was so that Read more ...