Reviews
Hamlet, Glyndebourne review - integrity if not genius in Brett Dean's scoreMonday, 12 June 2017
Nature’s germens tumble all together rather readily in more recent operatic Shakespeare. Following the overblown storm before the storm of Reimann’s Lear and the premature angst of Ryan Wigglesworth’s The Winter’s Tale, what's rotten in the state of... Read more... |
The Loch, ITV review - hokum shrouded in Scotch mistMonday, 12 June 2017
There’s something nasty in Loch Ness – a corpse tied to a curling stone – but, this being tellyland, the real monsters lurk on its shores. The Loch aspires to be a Scottish Broadchurch – Braidkirk? – but, alas, is nothing of the... Read more... |
Anatomy of a Suicide, Royal Court review - devastatingly brilliantMonday, 12 June 2017
Dorothy Parker’s take on suicide is called “Resumé”: it goes, “Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.” Although this seems to cover the... Read more... |
Poldark, Series 3, BBC One review - tempestuous passions and pantomime villains ride againMonday, 12 June 2017
Is it always the same bit of Cornish clifftop they gallop along in Poldark? Anyway here it was again, raising the curtain on the third series. As the camera flew in over a gaggle of squawking seagulls spiralling above the foaming surf crashing on... Read more... |
Elif Batuman: The Idiot review - memories of student life and travels meanderSunday, 11 June 2017
University, anyone? Student days? If you were ever an undergraduate, who does not remember the simultaneous sense of dislocation and excitement, the feeling of the familiar combined with a heady awareness that we might fall off a cliff,... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Pop MakossaSunday, 11 June 2017
In Summer 1973, Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” peaked at 35 on the American charts. Originally the A-side of a France-only single issued in 1972, the song had been discovered by New York DJ David Mancusso. After Mancusso repeatedly played it, “Soul... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Snape MaltingsSaturday, 10 June 2017
It’s all there in the first few bars of Britten’s music – that unsettling tension between beauty and familiarity, and eerie, undefinable otherness. Those cello glissandi might end in glowing major chords, but the tentacle-like slides throw them into... Read more... |
Summer of Love: How Hippies Changed the World review - the weird and wonderful roots of the Sixties countercultureSaturday, 10 June 2017
As the accompanying music reminded us, it's the time of the season for looking back in languor at the psychedelic daze that descended on America's West Coast in 1967. It was an era when one was enjoined, if going to San Francisco, to "be sure to... Read more... |
Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! Serpentine GalleryFriday, 09 June 2017
The most popular exhibition of a living artist ever held at the Tate was David Hockney’s recent retrospective, which attracted 478,082 visitors. If Grayson Perry is to top that, as the title of his Serpentine Gallery show optimistically predicts,... Read more... |
Election Night 2017, BBC One, ITV, Channel 4, Sky NewsFriday, 09 June 2017
The latest test of the nation’s perseverance and patience – a snap election called just before the negotiations for Brexit are due to start – seemed like an extraordinary act of hubris at the start. The initial billing of “Strong and... Read more... |
Scottish Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - striking and memorable danceFriday, 09 June 2017
Years ago, MC14/22 (Ceci est mon corps), the Angelin Preljoçaj piece with which this Scottish Ballet double bill opens, made a deep impression on Christopher Hampson. So deep that, once he became Artistic Director of Scottish, he actively sought it... Read more... |
Tristan und Isolde, Longborough FestivalFriday, 09 June 2017
The Longborough Festival was started, essentially, to perform Wagner, and Wagner is still what it does best. This revival of Carmen Jakobi’s production of Tristan und Isolde is the strongest argument imaginable for small-theatre Wagner. For once the... Read more... |
