Reviews
Prom 65: Coote, English Concert, BicketFriday, 04 September 2015
What was a stunningly good Alice Coote recital doing trapped inside an A-level Theatre Studies project? I’m not sure that Being Both – the semi-staged sequence of Handel arias originally commissioned by the Brighton Festival – ever came close to... Read more... |
American UltraFriday, 04 September 2015
The Bourne trilogy riffed on the idea of an undercover CIA operative who is so thoroughly brainwashed he no longer knows who he is. American Ultra mines that same scenario for laughs. Where Matt Damon looked the part, the weedy Jesse Eisenberg is... Read more... |
Boy Meets Girl, BBC TwoFriday, 04 September 2015
Any romcom that begins with a woman saying the line “I was born with a penis” is OK by me. And that's how Boy Meets Girl, a superb new comedy created by Elliott Kerrigan, begins a six-part series.Kerrigan and co-writer Simon Carlyle have neatly made... Read more... |
Love and Betrayal in India: The White Mughal, BBC FourFriday, 04 September 2015
William Dalrymple has discovered a fascinating true romance from history in this story of the relationship of Indian-born British diplomat James Achilles Kirkpatrick and the Muslim princess Khair-un-Nissa in Hyderabad at the turn of the 19th century... Read more... |
Cradle to Grave, BBC TwoThursday, 03 September 2015
Turning autobiography into comedy gold is an alchemy that has often been tried. Among them Caitlin Moran’s Raised by Wolves, Kathy Burke’s superb Walking and Talking, and the mooted but, as yet uncommissioned story of Jeremy Clarkson’s childhood,... Read more... |
Closed CurtainThursday, 03 September 2015
Any consideration of Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain will inevitably be through the prism of how it was made, and the director’s current position in his native country. It’s his second work, after This Is Not a Film from 2011, to be... Read more... |
People, Places and Things, National TheatreWednesday, 02 September 2015
We all know what the word “addict” means, but what does it feel like to be one? Thirtysomething Emma – a minor actress played with immense conviction and quirky charm by Denise Gough – knows exactly. At one point in Duncan Macmillan’s... Read more... |
Prom 62: Barton, OAE, AlsopWednesday, 02 September 2015
A concert of Brahms chamber music I could understand, especially given a balance between early and late. An evening of orchestral Brahms, with or without voices, needs much more special pleading. It didn’t get nearly enough last night. An expanded... Read more... |
Cartel LandWednesday, 02 September 2015
Cartel Land opens with a group of crystal meth cooks at work somewhere in the dead-of-night Mexican wilderness. They boast about the quality of their goods: they have the best production equipment, and were even taught their expertise by a visiting... Read more... |
Heartless Bastards, BorderlineWednesday, 02 September 2015
Some consider Heartless Bastards to be the best band you’ve probably never heard of – albeit blighted by an awful name. Others say the Texas-based four-piece are merely a jumped-up garage band. Wherever you stand, though, one thing is beyond... Read more... |
Miss JulieTuesday, 01 September 2015
The television series Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs, along with Robert Atman’s film Gosford Park, notably illustrate the public’s continued fascination with the relation between masters, mistresses and their servants. Yet none of them, not... Read more... |
Prom 60: Denk, San Francisco Symphony, Tilson ThomasMonday, 31 August 2015
One astonishing creature was missing from the cavalcade of meerkats and whatnot featured in Sunday afternoon’s Life Story Prom introduced by Sir David Attenborough. I mean, of course, the species known as henricuscowelliensis. Or otherwise, plain... Read more... |
