Reviews
DVD: My Darling ClementineFriday, 07 August 2015
In John Ford’s rueful 1946 allegory about the human cost of America’s new role as global peacekeeper, Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) agrees to clean up Tombstone, Arizona, as a pretext for revenging his teenage brother's murder by Old Man Clanton (Walter... Read more... |
The Heresy of Love, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 06 August 2015
Helen Edmundson’s The Heresy of Love may be set in 17th century Mexico and follow the conflict between strict religion and personal development, but its theme of a woman denied her voice by a surrounding male hierarchy retains real contemporary... Read more... |
52 TuesdaysThursday, 06 August 2015
An affectingly restrained Australian drama of adolescent development coloured by the repercussions of a parent undergoing gender transition, 52 Tuesdays may initially seem understated in its exploration of the balances (and imbalances) of family... Read more... |
Buddha: Genius of the Ancient World, BBC FourThursday, 06 August 2015
This programme was a puzzle. It didn't quite work, and it should have worked an absolute treat, as Buddhism is in some respects the religion, or rather the way of life, that has more and more caught the attention of the West in terms of scholarship... Read more... |
Game of Thrones: Episodes 4 & 5Thursday, 06 August 2015
On TV, the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones is usually the most shocking and pivotal. In the game? Maybe not so much.We rejoin the disparate members of House Forrester after a rather downbeat third episode. Former squire Gared is accused of... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Camp Bestival 2015Wednesday, 05 August 2015
Camp Bestival 2015 was bathed in four days of glorious sun, a rare window of idyllic weather in this most cantankerous of summers. It took place, as it has since it began in 2008, amid the hilly, verdant and well-kept grounds of Lulworth Castle in... Read more... |
Prom 25: Orfeo, EBS, GardinerWednesday, 05 August 2015
English choirs and early music ensembles have a bad reputation for stiffness, formality – nothing wrong with the music, just the presentation. But with this dramatic and Italianate Orfeo, John Eliot Gardiner, his English Baroque Soloists and... Read more... |
Splendour, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 05 August 2015
On contemporary stages, absence is a constant presence. This is very odd if you consider how corporeal and concrete theatre is. Unlike film, which is just light shining on a screen, or books, which are just letters on the page, theatre is live... Read more... |
MarshlandWednesday, 05 August 2015
Marshland is set on possibly the last section of the Andalusian coastline which doesn’t have high-rise condos planted all over it. Imagine the Kentish marshes of Great Expectations, but with a harsh sun cracking the parched earth, while overhead the... Read more... |
Prom 24: BBCSSO, RunniclesTuesday, 04 August 2015
You never quite know whether a new work by James MacMillan is going to veer towards the masterly or the overblown. His magnificent chain of concertos has arguably yielded masterpieces, but the Third Symphony at the Proms in 2003 sounded like an... Read more... |
Hard to Be a GodTuesday, 04 August 2015
Don’t on any account be late for the first couple of minutes of the woolly mammoth that is Russian director Alexei German’s last film, Hard to Be a God, since the opening narrative voiceover gives a rare suggestion of explanatory background to a... Read more... |
Dear Lupin, Apollo TheatreTuesday, 04 August 2015
A sterling case is made for the lost art of letter-writing in Michael Simkins’ dramatisation of Roger Mortimer’s missives to his wayward son. Mortimer’s inimitable turn of phrase, preserved in epistolary form, is the highlight of a genial show... Read more... |
