Reviews
It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! review - without a little help from their friendsTuesday, 23 May 2017
This is the most frustrating film. It’s probably no fault of the makers, but it’s rare to have to assess a documentary for what it doesn’t have. Over nearly two hours of celebrating the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Beatles period – late... Read more... |
Injustice 2 review - the even better sequelTuesday, 23 May 2017
In 2013, NetherRealm Studios, the creative force behind the multi-million-selling Mortal Kombat franchise, got their hands on the DC Comics character roster and created a highly polished game where superheroes were at war with each other. Lois Lane... Read more... |
The Gabriels, Brighton Festival review - hilarious drama in the shadow of TrumpTuesday, 23 May 2017
The subtitle of Richard Nelson’s new trilogy suggests an anti-Trump polemic. Instead, its miraculous, almost invisible craft fulfils the President’s most hollow promise. It restores full humanity to a family of lower-middle class Americans who often... Read more... |
Hipermestra / La Traviata, GlyndebourneMonday, 22 May 2017
A Saudi princess in her white wedding dress digs her own grave as men pile up stones to hurl at her head — next, an Isis fighter is stabbing a knife at her neck to decapitate her. Ah, the fate of the heroine of the average baroque ... Read more... |
Meow Meow's Souvenir, Brighton Festival review – subversive but evocative new song-cycleMonday, 22 May 2017
Dream palace, cesspit and church; celebrated, mopped (by Marlene Dietrich, no less) and fucked: Brighton’s Theatre Royal has seen a whole lot of history, of both the splendid and the seedy variety. Now it has found a magnificent if unlikely... Read more... |
Colm Tóibín: House of Names review - bleakly beautiful twilight of the godsSunday, 21 May 2017
The news that Colm Tóibín has written a novel about Orestes, Clytemnestra, Electra and the whole accursed House of Atreus might prompt two instant responses. One could run: where does your man find the brass neck to compete with the titans of the... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Shel TalmySunday, 21 May 2017
As the producer of the early Kinks and Who, Shel Talmy’s status as one of British pop’s most important figures is assured. He is, though, American. Despite being integral to the mid-Sixties boom years when the Limeys took over, he was born in... Read more... |
Highlights from Photo London 2017 - virtual reality meets vintage treasureSaturday, 20 May 2017
At heart, Photo London is a selling fair for expensive photographic prints. You wander through the steamy labyrinth of Somerset House from gallery show to gallery show surrounded by black-clad snapperati, assaulted on all sides by images until lost... Read more... |
Richard III review - Greg Hicks gruesomely impressive as power-crazed rulerSaturday, 20 May 2017
There may never have been a time when Shakespeare’s Richard III did not have contemporary relevance, but surely never more than it does right now. And it’s to the credit of director Mehmet Ergen that this production doesn’t go to town on it, but... Read more... |
Inversion review - acutely observed drama of Tehran family strifeSaturday, 20 May 2017
Inversion may not be the catchiest of titles, but in the case of Iranian director Behnam Behzadi’s film its associations are multifarious. On the immediate level it refers to the “thermal inversion” that generates the smogs that engulf his location... Read more... |
Y Tŵr, MTW, Sherman Theatre, CardiffSaturday, 20 May 2017
Until yesterday my only experience of the Welsh language in the opera house was a few isolated passages in Iain Bell’s In Parenthesis last year and the surtitles WNO routinely put up alongside the English in the Millennium Centre. Now Guto Puw, a 46... Read more... |
m¡longa, Brighton Festival review - sensual tango explosionSaturday, 20 May 2017
Watching tango dancers Gisela Galeassi and Nikito Cornejo own the apron of the stage during the second half of m¡longa, the brain finds it difficult to process what the eyes are seeing. The pair seem to be one writhing, dark-toned dervish of jutting... Read more... |
