Reviews
The Swingers, Channel 4Friday, 24 February 2017
Can something be gained in translation? From its title The Swingers promises much. Much more than the original Dutch title Nieuwe Buren, which the caption in the opening credit sequence translates as The Neighbours. Someone in syndication has asked... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, National TheatreThursday, 23 February 2017
Everybody’s a little bit gay in Simon Godwin’s giddy new Twelfth Night at the National Theatre. From Andrew Aguecheek, vibrant in candy-coloured check, cuddling up to Sir Toby, and Antonio’s aggressive affection to Sebastian, to Orsino’s passionate... Read more... |
America After the Fall, Royal AcademyThursday, 23 February 2017
It may be a cliché to say that this is a “timely” exhibition, but America After the Fall invites irresistible parallels with Trump’s America of today. The exhibition showcases American painting of the 1930s, documenting the intense anxiety... Read more... |
The Girls, Phoenix TheatreThursday, 23 February 2017
Why? That's the abiding question that hangs over The Girls, the sluggish and entirely pro forma Tim Firth-Gary Barlow musical that goes where Firth's film and stage play of Calendar Girls have already led. Telling of a charitable impulse that... Read more... |
Roots, BBC FourThursday, 23 February 2017
Those of us who saw the first, 1977 TV adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots in our teens still remember the shock and horror at its handling of a subject about which we knew little, American slavery. We know a lot more now, but the visceral reaction to... Read more... |
Patriots DayThursday, 23 February 2017
Patriots Day is a patriots’ film. It dramatises the grievous day on which American values were threatened on American soil like no other time since 9/11. Two bombs were detonated at the Boston marathon in April 2013: two bystanders were killed, 16... Read more... |
Mirjam Mesak, Kristiina Rokashevich, St Bartholomew the GreatThursday, 23 February 2017
Treasure our young continental European musicians in London while you can. Only last week I learned that so many of the overseas students at London's Guildhall School had stories to tell about being questioned in public (usually "are you Polish?"... Read more... |
Juan Diego Flórez, Vincenzo Scalera, Symphony Hall, BirminghamWednesday, 22 February 2017
“Who says Mozart is not like Rossini?” remarked Juan Diego Flórez, about a quarter of an hour into his debut recital at Symphony Hall. “There are seven high Cs in this aria.” And with a flicker of notes from the pianist Vincenzo Scalera, he was off... Read more... |
Lost in FranceWednesday, 22 February 2017
Pulling together a music documentary strikes me as a simple enough concept. Gather your talking heads in front of a nice enough backdrop, splice with archive footage in some semblance of a narrative order and there you go. There’s no need to, say,... Read more... |
Low Level Panic, Orange Tree TheatreWednesday, 22 February 2017
The 1980s were a great decade for British women playwrights. During those Thatcher-dominated years, Caryl Churchill produced two world-class masterpieces – Top Girls and Serious Money – while a host of other playwrights, such as Timberlake... Read more... |
School Play, Southwark PlayhouseTuesday, 21 February 2017
Hot on the heels of Katherine Soper's award-winning Wish List, about the UK benefits system in crisis, and John Godber's This Might Hurt, about an NHS in crisis, comes this play about our education system in crisis. One suspects there will be plenty... Read more... |
The Halcyon, Series 1 Finale, ITVTuesday, 21 February 2017
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now…One of the many ironies of Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon’s massive novel partly set in 1940s London, is that what follows these opening lines (... Read more... |
