Reviews
Big Cats About the House, BBC Two review - irresistible feline-human bondingFriday, 23 March 2018
There is a jaguar in the house. Aged five days, and having been rejected by her mother, Maya has arrived from the wildlife park where she was born for hand-rearing by Giles Clark at his home in Kent. The cub is going to spend her early days with his... Read more... |
Simon Evans, Soho Theatre review - intellect examinedFriday, 23 March 2018
Simon Evans, at 52, is far too young to be a grumpy old man, but he’s doing his best to prepare for the role, with this amusingly dyspeptic standup show at Soho Theatre about the ageing process, and how the evolutionary model appears to be moving... Read more... |
Unsane review - Claire Foy in bonkers horror satireThursday, 22 March 2018
Steven Soderbergh has always been capable of a big Hollywood moment – Magic Mike, Oceans etc. But much of his filmography consists of curious sideways glances. He’s particularly drawn to the shifting distribution of power between the genders. From... Read more... |
The Plough and the Stars, Lyric Hammersmith review - trenchant reimagining of Irish classicThursday, 22 March 2018
Sean Holmes is artistic director of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, yet his revival of this seminal Irish play has taken two years to come home to him. The production was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, to mark the centenary of the Easter... Read more... |
Picasso 1932: Love Fame Tragedy, Tate Modern review - a diary in paint?Thursday, 22 March 2018
Painted in ice-cream shades punctuated with vivid red, the series of portraits made by Picasso in the early weeks of 1932 are as dreamy as love letters. His mistress Marie-Thérèse Walther – we assume it is she – lies adrift in post-coital languor,... Read more... |
Donohoe, LPO, Orozco-Estrada, RFH review – wit aplenty in rare StravinskyThursday, 22 March 2018
I left this concert a bit depressed, but not because of anything I heard: rather, by the conservatism of London concert-goers. As London orchestras focus on programming the usual wall-to-wall Brahms, Beethoven and Mahler, the LPO was rewarded for... Read more... |
Kiss of the Spider Woman, Menier Chocolate Factory review - brilliantly performed and imaginatively stagedWednesday, 21 March 2018
No, this isn't the large-scale Kander and Ebb musical, which opened in 1992 in London before transferring for a sizeable run on Broadway. Laurie Sansom's expert production instead both revisits and revises the lesser-known source of that song-and-... Read more... |
Caroline, or Change, Hampstead Theatre review - Sharon D Clarke conquersWednesday, 21 March 2018
It's long been a theatrical given, especially in musicals, that characters need to be seen to change: a climactic duo in the eternally crowd-pulling Wicked makes that abundantly clear. ("Because I knew you," goes the lyric, "I have been changed for... Read more... |
Joan Jonas, Tate Modern review - work as elusive as it is beautifulWednesday, 21 March 2018
The American artist, Joan Jonas is one of the pioneers of performance art. Now 82, she is being honoured with a Tate Modern retrospective and Ten Days Six Nights, a festival of live art in which many of her performances are being recreated... Read more... |
The Great Wave, National Theatre review - moving epic of global lossTuesday, 20 March 2018
You could call it an absence of yellow. Until very recently British theatre has been pretty poor at representing the stories of Chinese and East Asian people, and even of British East Asians. In 2016, Andrew Lloyd Webber called British theatre “... Read more... |
Tim Maia tribute, The Jazz Café review - the Brazilian wild soul legend revival continuesTuesday, 20 March 2018
The packed crowd at the Jazz Café was fired up by a sizzling samba soul band led by Kita Steuer on bass and vocals, singing along to a production line of hits, complete with dynamic brass section and superior percussion. All songs by a singular... Read more... |
Hamlet, RSC, Hackney Empire review - Paapa Essiedu's winning DaneMonday, 19 March 2018
Shakespeare's death-laden play is alive and well and breathing with renewed force in Hackney, the last British stop for an RSC touring Hamlet that moves on from London to the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC in May. Let's hope the American capital... Read more... |
