Reviews
Adam Sweeting
Arresting elderly entertainers for historic sexual abuse now appears to be the primary function of the police, and here they are doing it again in Jack Thorne's new drama about veteran comic Paul Finchley. Finchley is part of a much-loved double act with his partner Karl Jenkins (it seems strange that they named the latter after a popular contemporary Welsh composer, but he's played with carefully calculated ambivalence by Tim McInnerny), and Finchley's autumnal years suddenly turn to ashes when a pair of cops turn up at his door to inform him he's been accused of committing rape back in 1993 Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Not having read Mike Carey's source novel, I enjoyed the luxury of settling down with my bag of Warner Bros promotional popcorn having no idea where this story was headed. And for the first third of the movie, this was a real bonus.Who were these mysterious young children in rust-coloured prison-style jumpsuits, strapped into wheelchairs and being ordered around under the guns of clearly nervous soldiers? Were they telepaths or aliens, or being weaponised in some way? What were they being taught by the diligent, simpatico Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton)? What was extra-special about Melanie Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The wilder shores of contemporary visual art are now ephemeral or time-based: performance, installation, general carry-on and hubbub. But once upon a time – say, the 1960s – it was the nature of objects, pared down to essentials, and often made from real materials sourced from the streets, builders’ yards and shops, that startled: the idea made manifest without old-fashioned notions of the hand-made, craft or manual skill.The making could even be outsourced, and one critic called minimalism “ABC art”, reduced almost literally to building-block art: form or colour representing nothing but Read more ...
Helen Wallace
Papa Haydn might have been tickled to see his early intermezzo, La Canterina, pack out the Wigmore Hall on a Monday night. A night for connoisseurs, then, but Classical Opera has form when it comes to refreshing classical repertoire with the elixir of vocal youth. And with a line-up boasting Susanna Hurrell, Rachel Kelly, Kitty Whately and Robert Murray, this was no exception.Each was neatly introduced through solo arias by Haydn’s Czech contemporary, Josef Mysliveček (b 1737). Prised from his opera Semiramide, with its bewilderingly convoluted backstory, they revealed a composer of Read more ...
David Kettle
A single, lonely star might seem harsh for what is first-time director (and writer, and lead) Talulah Riley’s woeful debut feature. And it’s true that, if nothing else, the St Trinian’s franchise star packs a lot into her Scottish Mussel.Like an unconvincing storyline bringing together jokey, blokey Glasgow petty criminals, Highland hippy eco-warriors and an unlikely couple of mismatched lovers. And a cast of dozens, including fleeting cameos (usually gratuitous) from Harry Enfield, James Dreyfus, Russell Kane, Rufus Hound and more. And, of course, a trip back in time to the Scotland of Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Tin Man Games has carved out a successful niche, producing electronic versions of the classic Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks (as well as its own, original, Gamebook Adventures series). Created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, the Fighting Fantasy books turned their author’s love of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons into branching narratives in which readers/players decide how to progress through the story, punctuated by battles and tests of luck using dice-rolls.The first few Tin Man adaptations were straight digitised version of the original books, complete with page-turning effects and Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Medieval to Modern – Jeremy Denk’s Wigmore Hall recital took us on a whistle-stop tour of Western music, beginning with Machaut in the mid-14th century and ending with Ligeti at the end of the 20th. The programme was made up of 25 short works, each by a different composer and arranged in broadly chronological order, resulting in a series of startling contrasts, but punctuated with equally surprising, and often very revealing, continuities.Nothing in the first half, which spanned Machaut to Bach, was actually written for the piano, but Denk was unapologetic, applying a broad, and thoroughly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Chicago’s Chess Records first made waves in the Fifties with a raft of records which included future classics integral to defining the urban slant on blues music. Early in the decade, the label issued singles by John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. They also issued Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88”, one of the building blocks of rock ‘n’ roll and brought Bo Diddley to a wide audience. The pioneering label issued different styles of music, but blues defined its early days. It moved with the times though and embraced soul in the Sixties.Little Richard is also easily Read more ...
Matthew Wright
It’s fair to say that vocal jazz ranks modestly in British awareness of Danish culture, certainly below the instrumental music and the phenomenon of the moment, the cable-knit-sporting detective Sarah Lund. Which is a shame, because this second event in Pizza Express’ week-long festival illustrated the variety and strength of that country’s scene very effectively. Sinne Eeg is a multiple award-winning performer broadly in the American tradition, while Cathrine Legardh exemplifies a Scandinavian, folkloric style.Eeg performed a tasteful and eclectic selection of favourite standards and Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Growing up is a kind of grief: losing the person you once were to embrace the person you will become. That loss can fracture familial relationships, forced to adjust and reform as offspring alter, challenge, question and move away – physically, emotionally or both.The Adelaide-based family (pictured below) of Andrew Bovell’s shattering Things I Know To Be True, a co-production between Frantic Assembly and the State Theatre Company of South Australia, undergoes a series of these losses. Older daughter Pip (Natalie Casey), gets a job opportunity in Vancouver; Mark (Matthew Barker) has seismic Read more ...
David Nice
"Total immersion", the term used for the BBC Symphony's one-composer days, takes on a whole new meaning in the Thames Tunnel Shaft now transformed – but fortunately not subject to makeover – under the mantle of Rotherhithe's Brunel Museum. All the more so with the pioneering Modulus Quartet, who presented the mostly consonant music of six collaborative composers with the main lights out, shifting colours on the performing space and films either to accompany three of the works or to let the creators speak in short, unpretentious introductions.The ambitious peripherals weren't perfect; Read more ...
graham.rickson
Michael Nyman and The Tempest – Prospero’s Books and Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs (MN Records)Think Michael Nyman and one inevitably thinks of the 1980s, and it’s quite possible that Nyman’s scores for Peter Greenaway will prove more enduring than the films themselves. This set, the two Tempest-inspired works remastered and reissued from Decca originals, includes the last Nyman/Greenaway collaboration, Prospero’s Books. A mixture of newly composed numbers and excerpts from an earlier theatrical score, it ended the pair’s working relationship. The reasons aren’t entirely clear from Nyman’s Read more ...