Reviews
Widmann, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - when Mirga met JörgFriday, 06 October 2017
Apparently it was Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s idea to invite Jörg Widmann to be the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Artist in Residence this season – indeed, according to backstage rumours she made the phone call herself. If that’s true, it’s a... Read more... |
The Glass Castle review - Woody steals the film by a wide marginFriday, 06 October 2017
People who live in glass castles might be wary of throwing stones. That clearly was not the case with American magazine journalist Jeannette Walls, who made of her often harrowing childhood a best-selling memoir that has found its inevitable way to... Read more... |
LFF 2017: Breathe review - overdosing on good intentionsThursday, 05 October 2017
The curtain-raiser for the 61st London Film Festival was Breathe, not only Andy Serkis’s debut as a director, but also a film based on the family experiences of its producer, Jonathan Cavendish. It was the story of how his father Robin, a tea... Read more... |
Roman Rabinovich, Hatchlands review - poetry from Chopin's very own Pleyel pianoThursday, 05 October 2017
What pianist wouldn't long to lay fingers on keyboards impregnated, as Roman Rabinovich put it in his introduction yesterday afternoon, with the DNAs of Haydn and Chopin? To take three of the 31 instruments in the astonishing Cobbe Collection at... Read more... |
Blade Runner 2049 review - powerful but needs more soulThursday, 05 October 2017
Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner from 1982 stands as an all-time sci-fi classic, so anybody trying to make a sequel (even 35 years later) needs galaxy-sized vision, an army of high-powered collaborators and balls of steel. Is director Denis... Read more... |
Doctor Foster, Series 2 finale, BBC One review - revenge is a dish best not served twiceWednesday, 04 October 2017
The second helping of Doctor Foster (BBC One) looked for a long time as if it would taste exactly like the first. Another plate of hell hath no fury, please, with extra bile on the side. That was essentially the plot up until the end of last week’s... Read more... |
Young Reviewer of the Year Award Winner: Katherine Waters on Marc QuinnWednesday, 04 October 2017
The best way to see Marc Quinn’s exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum is to begin at the end, in a room explaining the process of casting the sculptures’ moulds from the entwined bodies of him and his partner, dancer Jenny Bastet.Alongside text... Read more... |
Labour of Love, Noël Coward Theatre, review - Martin Freeman and Tamsin Greig labour in vainWednesday, 04 October 2017
Prolific playwright James Graham aspires to be nothing if not timely. His latest, a play about the Labour Party, was originally due to open during the week of that party’s conference, when our ears were once again ringing to the chant of “Oh, Jeremy... Read more... |
FIFA 18 review - as polished as football silverwareWednesday, 04 October 2017
As predictable as night following day, you can almost sense the transitional change from summer to autumn by the onset of a new football season accompanied by the latest FIFA instalment. Football needs context for it to grab the armchair midfield... Read more... |
B, Royal Court review - intriguing, ironical, but flawedTuesday, 03 October 2017
In the 1960s, we had the theatre of commitment; today we have an attitude of non-committal. Once, political playwrights could be guaranteed to tell you what to think, to describe what was wrong with society – and what to do about it. Now, as Chilean... Read more... |
Anne Schwanewilms, Charles Spencer, Wigmore Hall review - going deep in SchubertTuesday, 03 October 2017
They say that Wigmore Hall audiences know their Lieder singers, but last night's far from packed house dispelled that illusion; the hall has been full for much lesser artists than German soprano Anne Schwanewilms. No matter; she gave her usual... Read more... |
The Last Post, BBC One review - sundown on the EmpireMonday, 02 October 2017
Peter Moffat, author of Silk and The Village, has turned his sights on the last days of Empire for his latest series. Specifically, Moffat has mined his own memories of growing up in a British Army family in Aden in the 1960s, where his father was... Read more... |
