Reviews
Sarah Kent
Regarded as one of Denmark’s most important artists, Anna Ancher is virtually unknown here, so this overview of her paintings is a revelation as well as a delight.
At roughly the same time, in the 1880s, that Gauguin quit Paris for the remote village of Pont-Aven in Brittany, other artists began moving to Skagen, a fishing village at the northernmost tip of Denmark, attracted by the light and the unspoiled beaches, dunes and heathland. Among the incomers was Michael Ancher, whom Anna married, and who liked to paint the local fishermen heroically battling the elements.
Anna was the only Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
I have always been a bit ambivalent about the music of Arvo Pärt, recognising his achievement in crafting a new kind of choral music, while often finding it hard to love, especially in large doses. Which is why I welcomed the approach of the Carice Singers (with Christopher Bowers-Broadbent on the organ) and George Parris in making this concert, one of a series marking Pärt’s 90th birthday, also a celebration of a much younger Estonian composer whose music, although very different, made for an intriguing point of comparison.
Evelin Seppar (b.1986) (pictured below by by Sade-triis Read more ...
Justine Elias
Before Million Dollar Baby and Fight Girl, before women could compete in boxing at the Olympic Games, there was Christy Salters Martin. The hard-punching West Virginian known in the ring as the Coal Miner's Daughter and to U.S. television audiences as a sassy sports phenomenon was a housewife who just happened to knock people out.
Dressed in baby pink for the ring and floral, puffy-sleeved dresses for her many TV chat show appearances, Martin embodied all the contradictions of the ‘90s and early 2000s’ view of female athletes. "I’m not trying to make a statement about women in boxing Read more ...
Robert Beale
Sir Mark Elder was back on the scene of past triumphs last night as he returned to the Hallé at the Bridgewater Hall – and he has not lost his taste for the slightly unexpected.This was a bill that featured both a knight (himself) and a dame – Imogen Cooper as concerto soloist (pictured below) – and its first outing pulled a gratifyingly large crowd for a programme that was in two respects somewhat off the beaten track. Sibelius’s Scènes historiques Suite no. 2 isn’t heard particularly frequently, and Dvořák’s Symphony no. 5 does not hold the place of his last two in popular esteem. Elder’s Read more ...
James Saynor
Given that the film industry is a fairly vain business, it follows that every movie is to some extent a vanity project. So it seems churlish to describe this new Daniel Day-Lewis picture, which he co-wrote with his son, Ronan, for Ronan to direct and himself to star in, as other than a welcome return for the superman actor.
It’s eight years since Day-Lewis père was last seen on the screen (in Phantom Thread), or frankly seen anywhere else, and here the celebrated recluse plays an inland Robinson Crusoe coming to terms with the sins of the past. The film appears to be set about 20 years ago Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Ash (Riz Ahmed) is one of cinema’s capable men, the kind of monastically devoted pro made to be a hitman or getaway driver. David Fincher’s The Killer parodied the type with Michael Fassbender’s system-driven assassin, and from The Day of the Jackal to Drive, such men live or die by their method.
Ash’s gig is, though, intriguingly odd: he helps corporate whistleblowers with cold feet safely return evidence to employers, communicating via the Relay phone system for deaf callers, who type messages then spoken by operators, an old-school set-up firewalling him from detection. Ash is also versed Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“Rebellion begins with a breath,” an opening aphorism declares in this first film recounting Palestine’s 1936-39 Arab Revolt, long historically supplanted by Israel’s seismic 1948 founding.
The Gaza War meant director Annemarie Jacir filmed under duress, with her original West Bank village set overrun by Jewish settlers and Jordan standing in, before a defiant return to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The war impacted Jacir in subtler ways, emotionally entailing a straightforward film shorn of levity or experiment. The result is a low-budget equivalent to David Lean, less interested in Lawrence of Read more ...
Heather Neill
Perspectives on Shakespeare's tragedy have changed over the decades. As Nonso Anozie said when playing the title role for Cheek by Jowl in 2004, white actors once "concentrated on their perception of what a black man is". Laurence Olivier, whose 1964 performance in polished ebony make-up was once the gold standard for the part, famously observed black dock workers to learn their gait and mannerisms.Since the 1980s, as numerous actors of colour have tackled the role, the importance of Othello's race has shifted further from the centre of productions. At the National Theatre in 2013, Adrian Read more ...
Katie Colombus
After cancelling his Birmingham gig an hour before curtain-up due to illness, the anticipatory hype around whether Benson Boone’s London show at The O2 would actually go ahead was almost as electric as his infamous song. But a reassuring ping from the ’gram confirmed: it’s on. And indeed, it was.Two hours of rip-snorting kitsch-pop later, and any trace of illness or fatigue was well hidden. Somehow, Boone summoned the energy to bring full Bennie-style spectacle to a sold out arena in a show equal parts confetti-drenched musical dream and emo-tinged, power-grabbing balladry, delivered by a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Climb upon a bridge to far, go anywhere your heart desires.” The key phrase from the title track of Midlake’s sixth studio album conveys the perception that anything is within reach should an appropriate mind-set be attained. However, later on the album there are references to a “lion’s den” and “war within the valley of roselesss thorns,” a setting where “power and glory were in store.”It seems, then, that this is a realm where escaping to a place called “far” is necessary for self-protection. Midlake singer and frontman Eric Pulido has said of the album’s "The Calling" that the song “has Read more ...
Gary Naylor
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s so very different about Belfast and Glasgow, both of which I have visited in the last few weeks, compared to, say, Manchester or Birmingham. Sure, there’s the architecture and the accents, but it’s more than that. To find Glasgow's Citizen’s Theatre, I typed "Gorbals Street" into Google Maps. I looked down for a minute on a bus in Belfast, and when I looked up, the Falls Road had become the Shankhill Road, the (in)famous murals rather contrasting. For an Englishman, these places come freighted with a history of transgression, even insurrection, and, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
During a false start to “Billy Don’t Fall”, on Sunday night at Birmingham’s iconic Town Hall, Sananda Maitreya took the opportunity to address the packed house before him. He noted that there’s now a King on the throne of England, an American Pope and that “all the white ladies have got big lips and big asses – so, it’s a long time since we were here last.”It certainly is an age since the artist formerly known as Terence Trent D’Arby headlined a UK tour. Twenty-three years, to be precise. In fact, for those who don’t remember that far back, he was once a global superstar to rival anyone who Read more ...