Reviews
Sarah Kent
“My mother has always been a bit of a mystery to me not only as an artist but also as a mum,” declares Nick Willing by way of introduction to his film for BBC Two on the painter Paula Rego, who turned 82 in January. What follows is as far removed from a traditional biopic as you could hope to find. There are no experts wittering on about Rego’s importance to contemporary British art or analysing the meaning of her strange, narrative pictures and the powerful women who inhabit them. There’s no bigging up of her career; you have to wait until the end to learn that in Portugal, where she Read more ...
Peter Forbes
Two pernicious practices dominate Christian Madsbjerg's Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm: algorithm addiction and fake philosophy. The author thinks one is the answer to the other, thus cancelling out most of the argument, but when his guard drops a few chinks of wisdom do peep through.In the managerial motivation industry in which Madsbjerg operates, you coin a plausibly vague word or acronym and claim novelty for the mixture of banality and tendentiousness that results. “Sensemaking” is pretty routine in this respect: the best example I’ve Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Over 1972 to 1975, Finland staged a small-scale invasion of Britain. A friendly one, it was confined to music. First, the progressive rock band Tasavallan Presidentti came to London in May 1972 and played Ronnie Scott’s. The Sunday Times’ Derek Jewell said they were “frighteningly accomplished” and that readers should “watch them soar”. The next year, they toured and appeared on BBC2’s Old Grey Whistle Test. Their albums Lambertland and Milky Way Moses were issued here.Richard Branson was hip to the Finnish prog tip, picked up their countrymen Wigwam and issued their fifth album Nuclear Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Politics certainly caught up with Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius. The Brazilian director and his cast appeared at their Cannes competition premiere last year with placards protesting that democracy in their native land was in peril: it was the day after Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff had been suspended. Cut forward a few months, and the film’s autumn release coincided with the announcement that Rousseff would be thrown out of office and impeached.Given that Aquarius tells the story of Clara, a spirited matriarch in the coastal city of Recife – Filho’s hometown is the capital of Brazil’s Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Is English National Ballet's current predilection for acquiring European repertoire some kind of anti-Brexit statement, or just smart brand positioning? Last night's performance at Sadler's Wells, a sequel in all but name to the programme called Modern Masters they performed two years ago, put William Forsythe's In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated (famously created for the Paris Opéra Ballet) alongside eminent Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen's Adagio Hammerklavier and - coup of coups - Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring, still performed almost exclusively by her own company, Tanztheater Wuppertal. Read more ...
David Nice
It's a rare concert when nothing need be questioned about the orchestral playing. The usual nagging doubts – about whether any of the London orchestras has a recognisable sound-identity, or whether Rattle's swipe agains the two main London concert halls as merely "adequate" means players can't make a proper mark here – simply vanished. Under regular visitor Jakub Hrůša, the Philharmonia last night simply sounded like a top-quality central European orchestra producing the ideal light, shade and energy for Brahms – and it made its own warmth, a very difficult thing to do in the Festival Hall. Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The beauty of fiction is that its stories have both compelling shape and deep meaning – they are dramas where things feel right and true and real. The trouble with real life is that it’s the opposite: it is messy, frequently shapeless and often meaningless. So, at the Royal Court, Simon McBurney’s adaptation (with help from co-director James Yeatman) of the autobiography of 1970s Hollywood mogul Robert Evans is a hazardous venture. Evans was once one of the hottest producers in Tinseltown, responsible for multi-million-dollar hits such as Love Story, The Godfather and Chinatown; then this all Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Craig David’s two-hour show, in two parts, receives an ecstatic response in Brighton. The audience, dominated by women in their twenties, is loudly vocal in their appreciation, apparently knowing every word to every song on his six albums. It feels as if you might jump from the balcony, where I’m seated, and surf across the shimmying capacity crowd, buoyed up solely by the rising waves of love for this man.The first half isn’t for me. David’s band arrive in darkness and warm things up with an intro, then he strolls on, bearded, in white sweats, singing the 2005 album track, “My Love Don’t Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“The following images are extremely graphic.” The words appeared in white lettering against a black background, two-thirds of the way in. For the next minute, the screen filled with photographs of naked, emaciated corpses, some with crude writing across their bodies, others with labels affixed to foreheads. The eyes of one were gouged out; another’s mouth gaped open as if emitting a final scream of terror. These pictures weren't captured in the lager or the gulag or the killing fields of yesteryear. They tell of present-day atrocities in the Syria of Bashar al-Assad.Syria’s Disappeared: The Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In space, no-one can hear you say “hang on, haven’t I seen this before?” The sprawling, labyrinthine space ship full of ducts and passageways for terrifying creatures to hide in, the laid-back crew who’ve become a little too blasé about life in space, the cute little outer-space organism that looks like an exotic novelty pet…There’s plenty of Alien in Daniel Espinosa’s lovingly-crafted new space epic, more than a few echoes of the disaster-in-orbit thriller Gravity, and who knows how many flashbacks to countless spook and ghoul extravaganzas set inside haunted houses. Startlingly original it Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
What’s in a yellow dress? Hope over experience? Reckless confidence? This is a legitimate question when the second big cross-Atlantic people-pleaser hoves into view featuring a girl in a frock of striking daffodil hue. It doesn’t take a degree in semiotics to translate this. Forget the bad stuff, people. C’mon, get happy.As grand escapism, An American in Paris – a Broadway adaptation of a Hollywood movie-musical – is superb, despite its attempts to introduce a little darkness to the 1951 original. Anyone who remembers the Gene Kelly/Leslie Caron film as flimsy and forgettable should, well, Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Isn’t it funny? You wait ages for an opera by an eleven-year-old and then two turn up at once. The world’s feature journalists descended on Vienna at Christmas for a new take on Cinderella by Alma Deutscher. What they heard, for what it’s worth, was a precocious, glittery pastiche of Classical manners. Last night was the real deal. Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots, by Mozart: "The Obligation to Keep the First Commandment". Not a title to make the heart beat faster, is it? Ian Page and his increasingly prominent Classical Opera company commissioned Nigel Lewis for a snappy new English Read more ...