Reviews
Jenny Gilbert
London-born Akram Khan has come a long way in a 35-year career. He performed as a young teen in Peter Brook’s production of The Mahabharata, then progressed to dance training first in kathak then in contemporary dance. He then created his own company, forging alliances as a choreographer with the unlikeliest forces: English National Ballet, Juliette Binoche and Kylie Minogue. Four years ago he announced his retirement from the stage. Now, at 50, he’s back, unable to resist the siren call of his latest creation, GIGENIS: The Generation of the Earth. The capitalisation is typical Khan: he Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Pema Tseden's final film Snow Leopard is a Chinese Tibetan-language drama that addresses wild animal preservation. It serves as a kind of allegory for the circumstances that preceded the 53-year-old director's death from a heart attack last year. In 2016, Tseden was hospitalised after being roughed up by police when trying to retrieve his luggage at Xining Caojiapu International Airport. A diabetic, he was unable to take his pills while being held by the police.In the film, four guys from a local television station have been given a tip off about a snow leopard getting into a sheep pen Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Cleveland is probably the American city most like the one in which I grew up. Early into the icy embrace of post-industrialisation, not really on the way to anywhere, but not a destination either and obsessed with popular music and sports, it's very Scouse. Okay, the Mersey did not catch fire as the Cuyahoga River did in 1969, but it would not have surprised anyone in Liverpool had it done so.So it’s almost inevitable that Matt (Sam Mitchell) and Shawn (Enyi Okoronkwo) (pictured below) are like the lads with whom I grew up – okay, they’re like me, I’ll admit it. They bond over their NBA Read more ...
David Nice
From a privileged position in the Festival Hall stalls, I could see 97-year old Herbert Blomstedt’s near-immobile back as he sat on a piano stool with the score in front of him, but also his supremely expressive right arm and hand, every finger brought into play, the left hand occasionally visible to me as he raised it at moments of high emotion. The Philharmonia simply burned for him, every phrase and dynamic brought into focus to heighten an already assured vision.Only absolute mastery will do for Mahler's Ninth, his deepest symphony, its first movement alone a monumental test of ebb and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
London-based singer-songwriter Hannah Scott has warned her next song may reduce us to tears. It is, she says, inspired by events following the death of beloved father. The undertaker advised her, and her sister, that it wasn’t really done for women to bear the coffin. They considered this and ignored it. The resulting song, over a simply repeating piano motif played on her Roland keyboard, is called “Carry You Out” (“You carried me into this world/I will carry you out”). I look around and multiple hands are brushing at faces that silently stream with tears. Hannah Scott deals in weepies. But Read more ...
aleks.sierz
This Dickens classic is an annual treat, or a Christmas trial – depending on your point of view. At the Old Vic, it was adapted by Jack Thorne in 2017, and like the holly and the ivy has been a hardy perennial ever since. Here Scrooge has been played by stars such as Rhys Ifans, Paterson Joseph, Stephen Mangan and Christopher Eccleston. This time it’s the turn of John Simm.Over the years, this show – which transferred to Broadway, toured the US and was also staged in Melbourne – has raised about £1.5 million globally for food poverty charities. Although this is clearly a good Read more ...
Saskia Baron
The plight of persecuted minority groups around the world seems to be growing worse. As one form of response, a non-fiction film like Mediha works to make vivid the individual stories of people who might otherwise be reduced to statistics from places that are scarcely on the west's radar.The Yazidis of Kurdistan have been oppressed by Muslims since the days of the Ottoman Empire. The situation worsened when much of the land where they live was captured by Islamic State. Thousands of women and children were killed or taken prisoner and treated as sex slaves. Those who agreed to convert to Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
When the Venezuelan Rafael Payare was appointed as conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) two years ago, his first action was to blast his way through a French Berlitz course. A graduate of the El Sistema music-teaching project – where he had made his mark in the Simón Bolívar Orchestra as a horn player – one of his key challenges was to master from scratch the language in which this staunchly Francophone orchestra conducts its rehearsals.Watching him conduct however – his tall angular frame sometimes hunched-bird-of-prey like on the podium, sometimes erupting into a nimble Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Props designed like flowers were scattered across the QMU stage for English Teacher's performance. A fitting choice given the Leeds group are evidently in full bloom these days, with an upgraded venue in Glasgow due to demand and, of course, a Mercury Music Prize collected along the way for debut album “This Could Be Texas”. Stepping up in size has not fazed them, though. The props were a nice backdrop but more eyecatching was singer Lily Fontaine, who fizzed with excitement all night and carried herself like she was born to be on a big stage. That isn't the most obvious setting for the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Kemah Bob is a regular on television and radio panel shows and well established on the comedy circuit, but Miss Fortunate is her full-length debut. And what a debut; a personal story – ostensibly about the holiday from hell – that manages to riff on mental health, sexual adventure and cultural assumptions. And be funny.Bob, a Texan transplanted to London for the past eight years – “Because I hate sunshine and love abortion” – is a great storyteller, dropping a detail here, an interesting fact there (asides on weird animal genitalia pepper the show) as she recounts a tale about a Thai holiday Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Not just a backstage musical, a backroom musical!In the 70s, Follies and A Chorus Line took us into the rehearsal room giving us a chance to look under the bonnet to see the cogs of the Musical Theatre machine bump and grind as a show gets on its feet. But what of the other room, the writers’ room, where the ideas emerge mistily and the egos clang in conflict? [title of show] pulls back the curtain behind the curtain, behind the curtain.“More meta?” I hear you ask, a little wince in the voice. But, rather than an exercise in smartypants critiquing of cultural production from the inside-out ( Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The word “mahashmashana” – महामशान in Sanskrit – translates as “great burying ground.” Co-opted as the title of Josh Tillman’s sixth album as Father John Misty, its use might reflect a concern that the contemporary world is facing its demise. Or it may be due to its onomatopoeic quality. Perhaps both.Mahashmashana the album opens with its lush, strings-suffused title track. The lyrics mention the “next universal dawn” and “the corpse dance.” Here, truth “ain’t the kind of thing you can tell.” The song’s narrative seems to pivot on leaving a milieu populated by “rich assholes” for Read more ...