Reviews
Ross, Chichester Festival TheatreFriday, 10 June 2016
Thought Terence Rattigan was a playwright of the drawing room? Think again. A day after his defining work The Deep Blue Sea opened in an acclaimed revival at the National, Chichester Festival Theatre takes a lavish risk on this epic later work,... Read more... |
The Deep Blue Sea, National TheatreThursday, 09 June 2016
From being the Aunt Sally of contemporary British theatre, attacked by the angry young men in the 1950s and the new wave of social and political realists for three decades after that, playwright Terence Rattigan is now well and truly rehabilitated.... Read more... |
Where to Invade NextThursday, 09 June 2016
There are a lot of cheerful people in the world, most of them outside the United States. That's the startling conclusion of Michael Moore's pointed comic jeremiad Where to Invade Next, in which American cinema's premier schlub decamps overseas to... Read more... |
Into the Woods, Opera North, West Yorkshire PlayhouseThursday, 09 June 2016
Opera North’s ongoing Ring isn’t taking up much of the chorus’s time, which presumably is one of the reasons that many of its members have decamped half a mile east to collaborate with the West Yorkshire Playhouse in an eye-popping new staging of... Read more... |
Versailles, BBC TwoThursday, 09 June 2016
In the middle of the last century the worst thing that could be said about a working-class housewife was that she had “run off with a black man”. Well, the Queen of France, no better than she ought to be, has had it off with a black man (in fact her... Read more... |
Whitstable Biennale 2016Thursday, 09 June 2016
As if to signal a coming of age, this year's Whitstable Biennale has a theme: The Faraway Nearby. And so for the first time artists have a guiding idea with which to post-rationalise their work. Until now, the 10-day festival of visual art has... Read more... |
Matthias Goerne, Daniil Trifonov, Wigmore HallThursday, 09 June 2016
If you needed further proof of the intelligence, the thoughtfulness of Daniil Trifonov’s musicianship, the programme for his four-concert residency at the Wigmore Hall would go a long way towards providing it. How many young soloists of Trifonov’s... Read more... |
The Go-Between, Apollo TheatreWednesday, 08 June 2016
It has taken six years – and Michael Crawford – to bring Richard Taylor and David Wood’s poetic musicalisation of LP Hartley’s The Go-Between to the West End stage. And before the tired old debate begins as to what it is – opera? musical? play with... Read more... |
Cameron and Farage: Live, ITVWednesday, 08 June 2016
Never in the field of human voting has so much been demanded of so many by so few... Triggered by a moment of prime ministerial hubris and made reality by a Tory leadership bid and the relentless UKIP catcalls, the referendum is putting control of... Read more... |
Iris, Opera Holland ParkWednesday, 08 June 2016
"Better than Puccini," raved one Tweeter after the final rehearsal of Opera Holland Park's season-opener. Nonsense: "nearly as good as Puccini" is the best any of his Italian contemporaries could hope for; that applies to Leoncavallo and the Cilea... Read more... |
Der Freischütz, OAE, Elder, RFHWednesday, 08 June 2016
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is 30 years old, and last night it celebrated in style. The orchestra has a long association with the music of Weber, who became iconic of their pioneering work in presenting 19th-century repertoire on... Read more... |
Handmade: By Royal Appointment, BBC FourTuesday, 07 June 2016
The accelerating glorification, in the West at least, of the handmade is a fascinating phenomenon, perhaps a subliminal fight back against overwhelming industrialisation and the age of the robots. And perhaps nowhere is the admiration and commercial... Read more... |
