Reviews
Jasper Rees
The enthronement of Claire Foy has been quite a spectacle. Perhaps some of Her Majesty’s mystique has rubbed off, as she is now entering that territory known to few young actors, where you’ll happily pay to see her in anything. Should that policy extend to her newest incarnation?In The Girl in the Spider’s Web Foy becomes the latest actress to give her Lisbeth Salander, the super-damaged Swedish gender-neutral vigilante boffin. First off it was Noomi Rapace, then Rooney Mara. Now Foy wears the tats, the piercings, the leathers and the semi-shorn side-crop and steps astride a throbbing Read more ...
The Unknown Soldier, Infra, Symphony in C, Royal Ballet, review - WWI ballet honours obscure tragedy
Jenny Gilbert
Pity fatigue is a risk for any artwork marking the anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. There can’t have been a man or woman in the Royal Opera House on Tuesday night who hadn’t already read, watched, or otherwise had their fill of the horrors of the Western Front and the never-ending debate over the futility of it all. So a 30-minute ballet, coming nine days after the Cenotaph solemnities and commissioned by the Royal Ballet, inevitably felt like an unrequested encore.The Unknown Soldier, a collaboration between choreographer Alastair Marriott, designer Es Devlin and composer Dario Marianelli Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This production of Tennessee Williams’ neglected classic, Summer and Smoke, arrives from the Almeida into the West End with five-star plaudits for its pitch-perfect performances and pressure-cooker intensity. In an ideal world, this should guarantee a high-octane evening – but the chemistry of a space counts for a lot in theatre – so there’s inevitably concern that a larger venue will dissipate some of the essential dramatic steam.It is a pleasure to be able to report, therefore, that Rebecca Frecknall’s boldly expressionist production – with its electrifying soundscape – galvanises the Read more ...
peter.quinn
After failing to make the charts on its release 50 years ago this month, Astral Weeks has long since passed into pop mythology, its unique amalgam of jazz, folk and soul influences inspiring musicians, writers and filmmakers alike.Martin Scorsese said that he based the first 15 minutes of Taxi Driver on the album, Rickie Lee Jones has called it “still daring, still innovative”, Bruce Springsteen, who chose “Madame George” when he was a guest on Desert Island Discs, stated that the album “made me trust in beauty, it gave me a sense of the divine”, while in the 1979 anthology Stranded: Rock and Read more ...
David Nice
Getting the look right is half the battle: in that, Peter Groom's one-time-Captain Marlene Dietrich is a winner from the start. The looks at the audience nail it too, heavy-lidded and lashed but transfixing, charismatic, winning instant complicity. As with all the best one-(wo)man cabaret-style shows, though, this is no mere impersonation. Groom has the mannerisms and the mostly soft-grained delivery, but he delivers the familiar songs in his own register, with a special intensity that helps to make this selective light shone on a great 20th-century figure ultimately elegiac.It isn't Groom's Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
It’s Christmas already at Wigmore Hall. Or advent at least – this concert of Bach Advent cantatas was presented by the English Concert without apology or qualification, despite it still being the middle of November. But it proved a welcome fillip for a wet and dreary November evening, with the energetic and engaged playing of the small ensemble bringing out all the life and playfulness in Bach’s scores.Balance was a problem though, with the players often overpowering the singers (no choir here, the chorales and choruses all sung one to a part). The orchestra was bigger, with two desks each of Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
It was all going so well for Bethesda Games Studios, the developer behind some of the best single player action-RPGs to ever grace consoles. The Elder Scrolls titles combined with the Fallout games have kept the Maryland-based developer raking in the dollars for the best part of 20 years.The last Fallout game, released back in 2015, was a universally loved epic adventure that The Arts Desk nominated for game of the year. This latest offering, a game that suffered such drastic performance issues it had a launch day patch of over 50GB followed by a subsequent update of 47GB, is a pale shadow of Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The penultimate concert in the eclectic and impressive K-Music Festival of contemporary Korean music on Monday at the Purcell Room featured some of the most exquisite and affecting performances of the season, with the traditional Gayageum stringed instrument paired with an effects-laden, ambient-cum-exploratory jazz quartet featuring one of the most distinctive and arresting drummers anywhere, making remarkable music from her kit (shimmering cymbal solos, anyone?). K-Music tends towards surprising as well as enthralling its audiences, and that was certainly the case here.In 2016, solo Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
This opening episode of My Brilliant Friend was a stunning symphony in grey. For any viewers concerned that HBO’s long-awaited Elena Ferrante adaptation might be tempted to sweeten the visual experience of the writer’s impoverished 1950s Naples world to suit the expectations of an international television audience, the sheer subtlety of colouring here was the first sign that everything was going to be right.Director Saverio Costanzo will be receiving a whole range of plaudits for his work with the wide ensemble cast (including many non-professionals) that surrounds his two remarkable young Read more ...
Chris Harvey
There was barely a black-clothed, white-faced Numanoid in sight in the packed auditorium of the Royal Albert Hall as Gary Numan made his first ever appearance at the Victorian concert hall. His fans appear to have left that kohl-eyed look behind them as they’ve aged over the four decades since he first broke into the charts with Tubeway Army, but their love for him seems undimmed.Black might have looked a little out of place anyway as the electronic pop pioneer and his band loped on stage looking like a cross between extras from Mad Max: Fury Road and refugees from the desert planet of Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The toughest subject you can imagine: when, and how, would you choose death over life? This riveting film examined that excruciating dilemma within the legal frameworks on offer to some of the terminally ill in the United States. Louis Theroux, narrator and interviewer, met people who wished to take control of their end, and encountered all the moral complexities of the issue along the way. It was an absolutely absorbing, and often very moving experience.Seven states in the US have legalised self-administered lethal medication (with professional safeguards), and such a law is being considered Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The choice of what to go and hear in the London Jazz Festival can be bewildering: this first weekend of its 10-day run presented over 120 events. I managed to attend eight, of them at least in part, including some of the show that has predictably soaked up most of the media attention: the first of Jeff Goldblum’s two concerts on Saturday at a packed Cadogan Hall.Goldblum’s credentials as an A-List celebrity, as an entertainer, as a stage presence, as a charmer, as a quick-witted comic improviser are in no doubt. He can turn literally anything into part of a highly entertaining show and have Read more ...