Reviews
Edinburgh Fringe 2015: Joseph Morpurgo/ Daphne/ Tom ParryFriday, 28 August 2015
Joseph Morpurgo, Pleasance Courtyard ***** In Soothing Sounds For Baby, Joseph Morpurgo uses found objects - vinyl LPs with content so esoteric you would swear he had invented them - and the framework of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs to fashion... Read more... |
You Won't Succeed On Broadway If You Don't Have Any Jews, St James TheatreFriday, 28 August 2015
Well, here’s an oddity. You Won’t Succeed... is too fragmented for musical theatre, too bombastic for cabaret, and about as profound as a first-draft Wikipedia page. Channelling the self-referential levity of the Monty Python show from which it... Read more... |
Our Country's Good, National TheatreThursday, 27 August 2015
The political wheel has turned full-circle. When Our Country’s Good was premiered in 1988, it was a barely-veiled protest against Thatcher’s slash-and-burn approach to the arts in general and arts funding in particular. It couldn’t have returned at... Read more... |
Prom 55: SWR SO Baden-Baden and Freiburg, RothThursday, 27 August 2015
The only reasonable explanation for the all too belated arrival at the Proms of the SWR Baden-Baden and Freiburg Orchestra is that the festival’s house band, the BBC Symphony, is the one other ensemble reasonably entitled to claim the title of best... Read more... |
En ÉquilibreThursday, 27 August 2015
En Équilibre addresses the impact of disabling and irreparable injury, thwarted ambitions, the questionable practices of insurers, and the connection between two dissimilar, yet both frustrated, characters. Despite its different strands, the film... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2015: Nish Kumar/ Adam Hess/ Dial Medicine for Murder/ Larry DeanThursday, 27 August 2015
Nish Kumar, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★There's been so little out-and-out political comedy at this year's Fringe that it's a real joy to find a stand-up so engaged with politics as Nish Kumar.Kumar lays out his stall early on. The issue of... Read more... |
Everybody's Gone to the RaptureThursday, 27 August 2015
A tidy, English village. Swings hang in the breeze, a bicycle's discarded by a phone box, smoke curls over an ashtray in the pub garden. But no one's here. No one's ever coming back.Everybody's Gone to the Rapture isn't just one of the most... Read more... |
Hamlet, BarbicanWednesday, 26 August 2015
The set turns out to be the thing now that Benedict Cumberbatch's star turn in Hamlet has finally arrived, trailing in its wake a level of expectation, hysteria and scrutiny that might well have made many a lesser actor head for the hills. None... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Green Man 2015Wednesday, 26 August 2015
Sunday. Brecon Beacons. Very early in the morning. I am woken, as I have been every 20 minutes or so since falling asleep, by water dripping on my head. So far, I’ve been able to ignore it, the pain of sitting upright outweighing the inconvenience... Read more... |
A Day in the Life of Andy Warhol, BBC FourWednesday, 26 August 2015
It was suggested more than once during this adventure in Warhol-world that Andy Warhol himself was the artist’s greatest achievement. It’s a neat sentiment if not an original one, and while it may well be true, it didn’t bode well for a documentary... Read more... |
Prom Chamber Music 6: Jeremy Denk/ Prom 53: Fray, Philharmonia, SalonenTuesday, 25 August 2015
There were two reasons why I didn’t return to the Albert Hall late on Friday night to hear Andras Schiff play Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The first was that one epic, Mahler’s Sixth in the stunning performance by Andris Nelsons and the Boston... Read more... |
Soup Cans and Superstars, BBC FourTuesday, 25 August 2015
Pop went the easel, and more, as we were offered a worldwide tour – New York, LA, London, Paris, Shanghai – of the art phenomenon of the past 50 years (still going strong worldwide). We were led by a wide-eyed interlocutor, the bright-eyed and bushy... Read more... |
