Reviews
aleks.sierz
Politics is a serious business, but it’s also a spectator sport. Think of the duels in Prime Minister’s Questions; or the marathon that is Brexit. It’s a place of cartoon villains (Corbyn), straight villains (Trump) and plain cartoons (Boris). But while the pace of events makes writing about the present rather perilous, the past is a happy hunting ground, an area full of stories that all seem to prove one depressing thing: that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.Opening on Budget day, Steve Waters’s new play at the Donmar is a delight for politics buffs. Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari has never quite been a one-work composer. No points for knowing the fizzy overture to his delightful 1909 pro-smoking comedy Il segreto di Susanna; quite a few more if you know the whole opera. Extra credit for being able to hum the once popular "Serenata" from I gioielli della Madonna: but move on to his major operas – L’amore medico, say, or I quatro rusteghi – and we’re definitely into specialist territory. So it’s not entirely surprising that Wolf-Ferrari’s Violin Concerto hasn’t been performed in the UK until tonight, even once you set aside the uncomfortable Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
In I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Halley Feiffer has written a right curmudgeon of a central role. David is a successful playwright, a Pulitzer Prize-winner who has no difficulty slotting himself directly into the great American drama tradition. He’s also such a testy individual that even being in the same room as him for very long is an endurance. This being theatre, it’s a test we have elected to take, and the result has much of the fascination of an ongoing car crash.Adrian Lukis gives a compelling, bravura performance as a character who is not easy to like, but whose flexing, energetic Read more ...
Matt Wolf
To the list of abiding theatrical partnerships one must surely add Tom Stoppard and the director David Leveaux. From his Tony-winning revival of The Real Thing onwards to Jumpers and Arcadia, all of which played both London and Broadway, Leveaux has proved a particularly dab hand at mining this playwright in all his near-infinite variety. And if Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead as a play doesn't, in my view, rank with much of its author's extraordinary subsequent output, Leveaux's 50th anniversary revival nonetheless does the text's unbridled energy proud. How lovely, too, to encounter Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As Elle’s director Paul Verhoeven put it, “we realised that no American actress would ever take on such an immoral movie.” However, Isabelle Huppert didn’t hesitate, and has delivered a performance of such force and boldness that even the disarming Oscar-winner Emma Stone might secretly admit that perhaps the wrong woman won on the night.But it has to be admitted that Elle (adapted by screenwriter David Birke from Philippe Djian’s novel “Oh...”) could never be mistaken for a Hollywood production. A perplexing but electrifying mixture of sexual violence, black humour and social satire, it Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Tree of Codes is a work made from a work made from a work. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer's book-form art piece, which is itself based on Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, Wayne McGregor has fashioned a choreographic creation using a triptych of his own.One third is choreography, but there are two other equal parts in Olafur Eliasson's light sculpture art and Jamie xx's musical composition. The three work together in harmony, meshing and bonding to create a perfect whole.There's a powerful opener with total theatre blackout and pounding electro-dance rhythms as dancers flit like Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
As a scan through the 17-year list of Rosenblatt Recitals quickly reveals, sopranos and tenors come and (often as not) go. Much rarer is the opportunity to enjoy the gifts of a mezzo-soprano near the start of what should, all things being equal, be a long and illustrious career.Nine years a company member at the Bavarian State Opera, Tara Erraught deserves better from English audiences than to be remembered for the stir she caused (and for the wrong reasons) in her Glyndebourne debut as Octavian. It was the mark of a generous, thoughtful singer to share the stage in the first half with the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Peter Kay’s love – and extensive knowledge – of pop music is well known. He has often spoofed misheard song lyrics in his shows, and has released various charity singles over the years. Now, with this series of shows to raise funds for Stand Up to Cancer and Cancer Research, he displays his DJing skills with shows of three hours of non-stop dance music – a wonderful kind of school disco (for those who remember such things).That is, if the school discos you attended back in the day took place in an arena that holds several thousand and had a video and light show that frequently Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The masochistic reality show heralds a culture with an inferiority complex. There have been documentary re-running the race to the South Pole. Countless series place modern Britons in historical contexts where the dietary, sanitary and heating arrangements leave much to be desired. At the heart of them all is an anxiety that mod cons – radiators, white goods, frozen readymeals – have softened us. Are we simply not fit to lace the boots of our forebears?The latest endurance test is possibly the genre’s horriblest yet: a reboot of the journey undertaken by Captain Bligh and his loyal sailors Read more ...
David Nice
Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics; Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam; NHKSO Tokyo. Would you have thought of putting the Japanese orchestra in the same league as the top Europeans? I certainly wouldn't, at least not until last night. While there isn't the same blended warmth, the sound is never clinical or cold; and the revelation is an incisiveness unlike any other, no doubt encouraged by Chief Conductor Paavo Järvi's digging deep in the amazing march-mania at the heart of the finale in Mahler's Sixth Symphony.The ocular proof of that hard work could be seen in the physical movement and Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
When a great game presents itself, all its moving parts sing in harmonious unison. The intriguing and engaging story supports the beautiful visuals, the varied and challenging gameplay sits perfectly within the narrative and the gameworld feels full of promise and potential. Repetition doesn’t repeat itself, there’s no grind - just the experience of exploration and adventure and at its very best you just can’t get enough of it. Welcome to the fantasy world of Horizon Zero Dawn: you won’t be disappointed.With a hype introduction like that you could expect this PS4-exclusive single player Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Love, we know, will tear us apart again. And again. And yet again. It will shred our nerves and rip through our guts; it will fill us with anguish, and then douse us in regrets. It will expose our weaknesses, and then make us say what we can never unsay. It will embattle our egos, and then stamp on our ids. It will. It really will. And before you ask why the bedroom is so cold, I can tell you that all this is the effect of some passages of debbie tucker green’s new play, which will henceforth be known as the one with the long-dictionary-definition title, and which has national treasure Meera Read more ...