Reviews
Break of Noon, Finborough Theatre review - irredeemable?Tuesday, 29 May 2018
I’ve forgotten my wallet. This is both embarrassing (where did the fun lush part between callow youth and irrefutable senility disappear?) and upsetting because by the interval of the Finborough Theatre’s revival of French symbolist writer Paul... Read more... |
Echo & the Bunnymen, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review – Mac and Will hit the road with added stringsMonday, 28 May 2018
This Echo and the Bunnymen gig in Birmingham is one that almost didn’t happen, on a tour to promote the soon-to-be-released The Stars, the Oceans and the Moon, their first album since 2014’s Meteorites. With their beloved Liverpool FC playing Real... Read more... |
Unknown Mortal Orchestra/Deerhunter, Albert Hall, Manchester review – New Zealanders and friends create festival vibeMonday, 28 May 2018
Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s four albums all centre around off-kilter pop and flirtations with distortion; their latest LP, Sex & Food, carries this tradition forwards in a more laid-back manner. Their current European tour in support of the album... Read more... |
Sophie Mackintosh: The Water Cure review - on the discipline of survivalSunday, 27 May 2018
A body can be pushed to the brink, to the point where thoughts flatten to a line of light, and come back from death, but the heart is complex and the damage it wreaks barely controllable. For Grace, Lia and Sky, the three sisters of Sophie... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: NirvanaSunday, 27 May 2018
In William S, Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch, a simopath was “a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army and discharge cures it.” Being in uniform, then, reversed evolution.In October 1967, a British band... Read more... |
Solo: A Star Wars Story review - timid and torpidSaturday, 26 May 2018
This is franchise film-making at its worst. A Han Solo: Year Zero origin yarn makes some sense, after Harrison Ford’s piratical hero finished on the wrong end of a lightsaber in The Force Awakens. But the apparently freewheeling approach of Solo’s... Read more... |
Peter Pan, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - ensemble playing at its bestSaturday, 26 May 2018
This exuberant production both clarifies and further complicates the conundrum of Peter Pan. In any production true to Barrie there is an underpinning of sadness, an acknowledgement of the losses we must all suffer: children leave home and adult... Read more... |
Hip Hop Evolution, Sky Arts review - foundations of a revolutionSaturday, 26 May 2018
Comprehensively charting hip hop’s rise from the underground to the mainstream is no mean feat, but that’s exactly what Canadian MC Shad aims to do over four hour-long episodes. Originally shown in the US in 2016, and available in full on Netflix,... Read more... |
The Grönholm Method, Menier Chocolate Factory - sleek and short but in no way deepFriday, 25 May 2018
Add Catalan writer Jordi Galcerán to the shortlist of European playwrights who are finding an international perch, in this case with a tricksy four-character play that has had more than 200 productions in over 60 countries. The UK premiere of... Read more... |
Malcolm Middleton, Brighton Festival review - mordant brillianceFriday, 25 May 2018
Before starting this review a decision was taken: that the over-used description of singer-songwriter Malcolm Middleton as a “Scottish miserablist” would not appear. However, this has proved impossible. Middleton is renowned, to the coterie who... Read more... |
The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety, Brighton Festival review - molto nervosoFriday, 25 May 2018
Calixto Bieito has a reputation as a radical theatre-maker, and by any standards The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety is an unusual, genre-breaking piece; Bieito has described it as “like a symphonic poem for a quartet of musicians, and a... Read more... |
Karen Cargill, Simon Lepper, Wigmore Hall review - opulence within boundsFriday, 25 May 2018
Singing satirist Anna Russell placed the French chanson in her category of songs for singers "with no voice but tremendous artistry". Mezzo Karen Cargill has tremendous artistry but also a very great voice indeed, a mysterious gift which makes her... Read more... |
