Reviews
Thomas H. Green
The two main commands coming from the stage at this evening's Brighton Festival event are “Everybody jump, jump” and “Put your hands in the air and go side-to-side”. The crowd are mostly under 30 and emanate dancing energy from the moment the doors open, as DJ Molotov warms up. The set-up is basic, a DJ and some mics, but that’s as it should be for, on one level, this evening takes hip hop back to its Bronx block party origins, away from all the bling nonsense that’s taken it over. On another level, it’s a very British affair.High Focus, a Brighton record label founded in 2010, are Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Chain-smoking and charismatic, the painter, sculptor, draughtsman and printmaker Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) lived much of his life in Paris from his arrival there in his twenties. He was just in time for post-war cubism and pre-war surrealism, the energetic noisiness of the avant garde. And although he was almost always a realist, it was absolutely on his own hard-won terms, leading to his characteristically elongated human figures, based always on unbelievably extended sittings (even when figures were standing) of his nearest, close friends, family, his wife and his mistress.He was an Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
François Ozon’s Frantz is an exquisitely sad film, its crisp black and white cinematography shot through with mourning. The French director, in a work where the main language is German, engages with the aftermath of World War One, and the moment when the returning rhythms of life only emphasise what has been lost. The eponymous hero of his film is one of its casualties – we see Frantz only in flashbacks – and his death has left a gaping, if largely unarticulated wound. His erstwhile fiancée Anna (Paula Beer, a revelation) has become effectively his widow, living with Frantz’s parents. That Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Gamers have marched up and down more eerie space station corridors than Alien’s Ripley on Ritalin. From System Shock and Dead Space via Alien Isolation, Space Hulk and The Chronicles of Riddick, most of us have done the hard yards anxiously sprinting passed bits of generic futurist interior design, like Zaha Hadid let loose on Deep Space Nine.Prey, the latest run-gun-and-get-hopelessly-lost-in-another-bloody-space-station game is heavily influenced by the aforementioned System Shock and Dead Space titles. You’re a guy or girl who finds themselves outnumbered and often out of ideas after your Read more ...
Robert Beale
Enlightenment is a wonderful idea, and the members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment who played Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall last night brought the wisdom of today’s period instrument movement to bear on music that most would see as belonging to the age of the pre-Enlightenment. Present-day enlightenment lies not just in historical accuracy, however, but also – from an audience point of view – in catching the spirit of its original creators.The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment do that extremely well. The expertise of their techniques is Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
Was it just a coincidence that budding serial killer Sam attended Ripley Heath High? Probably not. Born to Kill, written by Tracey Malone and Kate Ashfield, was keenly aware that it followed in the bloody footsteps of both real sociopaths such as Harold Shipman and fictional ones such as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. And what a dance it led us!Over the past four weeks on Channel 4 we have seen the schoolboy move from the edge of things – a diving board, a wooded hollow where he hid his trophy tin, a birthday party for his only friend’s father – to the centre of a full-blown psychotic Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ricky Gervais enters the stage after recordings of some the great (and not so great) men of history – including Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King and Adolf Hitler. And then there's a portentous introduction – are we then going to hear some deep philosophical insights tonight? Well not so much, more chatty and relaxed riffing, with some of his most personal material yet.Gervais tells us he doesn't know why he titled his first stand-up show in seven years Humanity, as he prefers dogs and cats, and the bane of his life are people just waiting to be offended by his humour. He explains this Read more ...
Jasper Rees
For a demoralising period towards the start of Miss Sloane, it looks as if we’re in for a high-octane thriller about palm oil. That’s right, palm oil. Everything you never wanted to know about the ethics and economics of the palm oil market is splurged in frenetic, rat-a-tat, overlapping, school-of-Sorkin dialogue. After 10 minutes your ears need a rest on a park bench.Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain) is a hotshot lobbyist. Her peerless reputation in DC is for not having a moral bone in her body - she’s a gold medallist in ethical limbo, someone says. She’s the poster child for the most Read more ...
mark.kidel
Greek tragedy provides an unending source of material for the stage: in no other theatrical form have the labyrinths of human nature been so deeply explored: the rich tapestry of archetypal family conflicts, driven by instincts that force helpless characters into inescapable constellations of behavior that have resonated through several millennia.The Greeks understood, perhaps better than anyone, the perpetual ambiguity of human character. The divinities they imagined were never one thing or another, good or evil. Christianity and other religions of the book brought us a more rigid set of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Actor Oliver Chris, who plays William in Mike Bartlett’s ingeniously-crafted play about the monarchy, was doing some pre-transmission fire-fighting by going round telling interviewers he couldn’t see what anybody (eg the Daily Mail) could find to get upset about. Why would they? King Charles III only depicts the ghost of Diana speaking with forked tongue, a political and constitutional crisis, and an internal putsch within the Royal Family. There’s even a jibe about Harry’s paternity. And all this after having buried the Queen.To be sure, the piece has already enjoyed a lavishly-acclaimed run Read more ...
Alison Cole
At 93, Picasso’s revered biographer, Sir John Richardson, has curated a vital new celebration of the artist’s life and work, focusing on one of his most enduring and delightful subjects, the Minotaur. The exhibition at the Gagosian in fact charts two magnificent obsessions: one is, of course, Picasso’s passionate identification with this savage, absurd and tragic mythological creature (the Minotaur is the half beast/half human offspring of a bull and the wife of King Minos of Crete); the other is Richardson’s own inexhaustible study of the artist himself, whom he describes as “intensely funny Read more ...
Richard Bratby
It’s been said – and with some justification – that John Wilson’s own Orchestra has the finest-sounding string section in the world today. What’s certain is that when Wilson guests with other orchestras, he transforms their string sound. It’s not merely the unselfconscious touches of period style – those perfectly gauged expressive slides – and nor is it just the unforced luminosity: how the surface sheen seems to be lit from within. It’s the phrasing, too: the sense of space that Wilson can generate around a melody, the way fast passages never feel hurried and slow passages have room to Read more ...