Reviews
Veronica Lee
Where do they find them? The candidates for each new series of The Apprentice, that is. It's not as if they don't know the score by now - humiliation, first in the boardroom by Lord Sugar and his clunking putdowns, and then on nationwide television. But it makes good telly, so hoorah for series 11, with 18 more numpties vying for Sugar's £250,000 investment in their business plan.After the last series ended, the inestimable Nick Hewer retired from being (alongside the newly ennobled Karren, now Dame Brady) Sugar's “eyes and ears”, and the producers have surpassed themselves in bringing in Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Swan Lakes are not created equal. In fact they are not even created the same: ballet is the art form with the evanescent repertoire, in which First Folios – or any folios – are singularly scarce. Even with a classic as beloved as Swan Lake, there is no stable text apart from Ivanov's lakeside choreography for Act II and Tchaikovsky's score (though not even all of that). If a production shines in any other respects as well as these, the credit is due to the creative team and the company – so let's bring the house down for Birmingham Royal Ballet and the utterly splendid Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Crime drama is a bit like the wheel. There’s only so much scope for reinvention. People try to come up with novelties all the time, then you turn on the telly and realise everyone else has had the same idea. Rumpled cops in macs, ex-cops haunted by the past, cops with overbearing bosses descended from Jane Tennison – they’re all out there, all the time. Even the casting department is running on empty. It’s been precisely five days since Unforgotten unveiled a chirpy detective played by Nicola Walker. Now here comes River, featuring a chirpy detective played by Nicola Walker.River is written Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Over the past quarter century the reputation of toff playwright Terence Rattigan has been restored, mainly by strong stagings of his classic dramas, such as Deep Blue Sea. But his first smash hit, French Without Tears, has been the unicorn of his output – often talked about, often mentioned, often remembered, but never actually seen. Now Paul Miller, the ever-enterprising artistic director of the Orange Tree, has brought this unicorn into public view, allowing audiences to enjoy a joyful sighting of a rare beast.Originally put on in 1936 in the West End, where it ran for more than 1,000 Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Yves Klein staged a photo of himself, in November 1960, swallow-diving into the air from a first floor window, arms outstretched like a bird. Leap into the Void was faked – the friends waiting with a tarpaulin on the pavement below were montaged out of the final picture – but such was the appetite for heroism that the image soon became emblematic of the superhero risking all for his art. Why this fascination with artists who take risks in and for their art? In his book Man’s Rage for Chaos Morse Peckham argues that art provides an arena in which to experience risk at arm's length. The Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Rents are going up, local businesses priced out, and the rich folk and hipsters are invading. That’s in Washington Heights, New York’s largely Dominican-American quarter, but it could as easily describe King’s Cross, one of multiple London areas undergoing gentrification. This Tony Award-winning musical from pioneering composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (currently ruling Broadway with Hamilton), which features an irresistible hip-hop, rap, pop and Latin fusion score, is propulsive entertainment with a resonant social conscience.Our guide to the Heights is Usnavi (Sam Mackay), whose bodega – Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
The music of Olivier Messiaen lends itself ideally to the kind of multimedia project created by Cordelia Williams. His titles tell stories of terror and redemption, Man, men, God and angels. His chords burst with colour, not only the green and gold of Christmas or the red and purple of Crucifixion but the pulsing of a slow journey, stripes of redemption, layers of wakefulness. The only drawback is that the composer himself was very sure about what those stories and colours were, leaving little room for later interpreters to add their own perspectives.Nothing daunted, Williams commissioned Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Suffragette is exemplary in its attempt to depict the harrowing experiences of the British women who risked their lives to win the vote. It depicts the awakening of a reluctant recruit who becomes a militant, and graphically depicts the violence meted out to the protestors and hunger strikers in the critical years of 1912-13, potently drawing parallels with the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike and the 1981 Irish Republican hunger strikes. Yet it’s also a history lesson so worthy and dutiful that viewers might miss how unusual it is for a mainstream movie to endorse acts of anti-state terrorism, even Read more ...
Marianka Swain
There’s nothing like a death to bring a family together. In Simon’s case, that death is his own – impending execution by firing squad in an unnamed Asian country, unless he can win a reprieve from the Prime Minister, President or Pope, “one of the Ps”. Confined space, buried secrets, and a race against the clock: in his stage debut, filmmaker Paul Andrew Williams is determined to make his audience sweat.That you certainly will (and not just because of Trafalgar Studio 2’s appropriately cramped and furnace-like environs), although Williams’ methods of applying pressure tend towards the large, Read more ...
Nick Hasted
How do you corral 250 films in a way which makes sense to potential viewers? Major releases – so far at this year’s LFF we've had Suffragette, Johnny Depp in Black Mass and Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van – pretty much take care of themselves. For the mostly unknown rest, festival director Clare Stewart introduced themed strands in 2012 with the stated aim of making the festival “much easier to navigate”. Where the LFF had previously been divided by nation – New British Cinema, French Revolutions, then Europe, then everyone else – we now essentially have a choice of emotions: Dare, Thrill Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Stunningly reinvented in series four, Homeland sustained the momentum with this tense and menacing fifth season opener. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) has now quit the CIA for a new job in Berlin, where she's working as head of security for billionaire philanthropist Otto Düring (Sebastian Koch). The past, however, is not giving up without a fight.In the light of recent real-life events, it was smart work by the writers to throw the spotlight on the German capital. Filming obviously took place before the current refugee crisis (and Frau Merkel's controversial leading role in it) blew up, but Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Return to Larkinland was the second of AN Wilson’s intimate portraits of poets, following his similar excursion to “Betjemanland” last year. His very particular form of exploration of the biographical genre results in a selectively detailed portrait seen through the eyes of an admitted admirer, a sense of character created through a pronounced feel for Larkin’s times, caught in redolent black and white archive, as well as in the attention he pays to the places and spaces of the poet’s life.Wilson knew Larkin well, but wasn’t reluctant to confront the darker issues that have been associated Read more ...