Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: Death and VanillaSunday, 29 May 2016
Last May, Malmö trio Death and Vanilla issued the To Where the Wild Things are album and it seemed they had arrived as a fully formed post-Broadcast proposition, harmoniously fusing vintage influences like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Italian... Read more... |
Brighton Festival: Stella, Theatre RoyalSunday, 29 May 2016
A Victorian transgender celebrity is a fitting and timely subject for this Brighton Festival premiere. Writer-director Neil Bartlett turns Stella’s scandalous life into a stark horror story, marked by the regular, jarring crash of glass which sounds... Read more... |
Brighton Festival: Alexei Sayle, Corn ExchangeSaturday, 28 May 2016
The last time I saw Alexei Sayle was at a benefit gig in Essex in the Eighties, when his rapid torrents of invective and surreal invention was stand-up as great as I’ve seen. Last night’s stage interview about his memoir, Thatcher Stole My Trousers... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Kenneth Hesketh, Vaughan Williams, Ensemble PygmalionSaturday, 28 May 2016
Kenneth Hesketh: horae (pro clara) Clare Hammond (piano) (BIS)Pianist Clare Hammond writes of Liverpudlian composer Kenneth Hesketh’s ‘fierce intelligence’ in her sleeve notes. He’s not yet a household name, but he deserves to be: the music on this... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 17 - Paul McCartney, Moby, Grace Jones and moreSaturday, 28 May 2016
News just in that the vinyl soundtrack to Star Wars: The Force Awakens will feature holograms that can seen as the record is played, if a light is shone upon it. It seems that every month there’s a similarly bizarre development in the many ways that... Read more... |
The Threepenny Opera, National TheatreFriday, 27 May 2016
Last seen at the National Theatre over 10 years ago, Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera is back in a new adaptation by Simon Stephens. But looking at Rufus Norris’s epic-theatre-lite production – all exposed stage-mechanics and makeshift sets... Read more... |
Alice Through the Looking GlassFriday, 27 May 2016
How much you enjoy this new version of Alice Through The Looking Glass will be directly proportional to how much you revere Lewis Carroll’s original text. If you love the original you will be perplexed, wondering if you have come into the correct... Read more... |
Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Welsh National OperaFriday, 27 May 2016
Seventy years ago, almost to the month, Welsh National Opera took to the stage for the first time with a double bill of the terrible twins, Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci; and fifty years later the company celebrated with the same two works... Read more... |
Jekyll & Hyde, Old VicFriday, 27 May 2016
From time to time theatre managements hit on the idea that danced drama should be part of their remit. Nick Hytner flirted with it at the National in his day with a run of productions for Lloyd Newson and his company DV8. Now Matthew Warchus, his... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Garrick TheatreThursday, 26 May 2016
Trouble remembering in which country Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers cross paths? Branagh’s panting paean to Fellini will sort you out. Stylish as a monochromatic Vogue spread, and as self-consciously Italian as Bruno Tonioli guzzling lasagne in a... Read more... |
Money MonsterThursday, 26 May 2016
This is one of those films where it really is better not to have seen the trailer first. Much of the pleasure is in the narrative twists and the developing characters, and the publicity gives too much away. Nevertheless, Money Monster is an... Read more... |
Going Going Gone, BBC FourThursday, 26 May 2016
In Going Going Gone Nick Broomfield was fighting to get access all over again – but it wasn’t exactly the same kind of challenge he’d faced with Sarah Palin or some of his previous targets. Doors were closed, but the keepers of the keys here were... Read more... |
