Reviews
Bartlett, Fantasia Orchestra, Fetherstonhaugh, Proms at St Jude's review - Americana both fun and fierceTuesday, 25 June 2024
Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the sweet dream of Florence Price’s Adoration fit that bill. But An American in Paris sounded completely different... Read more... |
My Father's Fable, Bush Theatre review - hilarious and haunting family dramaTuesday, 25 June 2024
Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the Bush Theatre is riding high. Now this venue’s latest exploration of the Black-British experience tells a really lively and emotionally deep story... Read more... |
Giulio Cesare, Glyndebourne review - every number a winner from dazzling revival castMonday, 24 June 2024
How much better can a classic get? Sebastian Scotney more or less asked the same question on theartsdesk the last time Giulio Cesare returned in triumph to Glyndebourne. I never saw David McVicar’s justly famous production of what has to be Handel’s... Read more... |
Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our World review - how far games go backMonday, 24 June 2024
For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up, players might find themselves dressing virtual wounds, struggling to co-ordinate tactics with their squad, and... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Cryin’ Shames - Please Stay, Do The Strum! - Joe Meek's Girl Groups and Pop ChanteusesSunday, 23 June 2024
Liverpool’s The Cryin’ Shames were responsible for two of mid-Sixties Britain’s most striking single’s tracks. The February 1966 top side “Please Stay” was so eerie, so wraithlike it came across as an attempt to channel the experience of making... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Smetanova Litomyšl - three fascinating operas and a masterpiece superbly vindicatedSaturday, 22 June 2024
What did they put in the water of Czechia’s central Bohemia/Moravia borderlands? From south to north there's Mahler’s birthplace in Kalište and the city of his youth, Jihlava; the Polička tower where Martinů was born; and finally the Litomyšl... Read more... |
The Exorcism review - salvaged horror movie is a diabolical messSaturday, 22 June 2024
Helpfully, this is a film that reviews itself. Like it says on the posters, “They were making a cursed movie. They were warned not to. They should have listened.”If ever a film was meant not to be, here it is. Apparently it was going to be called... Read more... |
Green Border review - Europe's baleful boundaryFriday, 21 June 2024
We’re used to dabs of colour splashing briefly across black-and-white movies – Spielberg’s Schindler’s List or Coppola’s Rumble Fish spring to mind – but director Agnieszka Holland has a new and uncompromising variant on the ruse.The colour opening... Read more... |
Rain Parade, 229 review - the Paisley Underground perennials prove unafraid of their pastFriday, 21 June 2024
It kicks off with “No Easy Way Down.” First released on 1984’s mini-LP Explosions in the Glass Palace, it was an instant benchmark by which to measure Rain Parade. Churning, dense and foggy, it made good on what this California outfit were portrayed... Read more... |
The Bounds, Royal Court review - soccer play scores badlyFriday, 21 June 2024
Every day this week I’m watching a football match, and now – after April’s production of Lydia Higman, Julia Grogan and Rachel Lemon’s Gunter – comes another football stage drama to tear up the turf at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs.This time it... Read more... |
The Bikeriders review - beer, brawls and Harley-DavidsonsThursday, 20 June 2024
The best-known book about motorcycle gangs is Hunter S Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, a classic foundational text of the so-called “New Journalism”. It was published in 1966, two years before Danny Lyon’s The Bikeriders, the source material for Jeff... Read more... |
Kiss Me, Kate, Barbican review - an entertaining, high-octane Cole Porter revivalThursday, 20 June 2024
Lincoln Center’s Bartlett Sher is back in town to direct the Barbican’s latest summer blockbuster, Cole Porter’s classic Kiss Me, Kate. It’s an energetic, largely intelligent production of what is at base a screwball comedy with great songs. ... Read more... |
