Reviews
stephen.walsh
It’s well-known that Wagner shelved The Ring two thirds of the way through in favour of Tristan with the aim of producing something that could be put on quickly in a conventional theatre. Of course, it didn’t quite work out that way. Yet Tristan, for all its technical difficulties, does lend itself to a relatively small stage. Its ensemble scenes are few and manageable, and for the rest it’s basically a conversation piece. For the barn theatre at Longborough it presents no insuperable problems, and it’s no surprise that the summer festival there has come up with a wonderful performance to add Read more ...
ellin.stein
Some people are irritated by Entourage’s superficial depiction of Hollywood as a bro fantasy world, but this is like condemning a soufflé for not being a roast chicken. For those like myself who enjoyed Entourage the television series, Entourage the movie will be very much the kind of thing they like, since it is essentially a feature-length version of the long-running HBO/Sky Atlantic show; non-enthusiasts, however, may find it shallow, shambolic, sexist, and smug (if you feel this perfectly describes Top Gear, you probably fall into the latter category).Like the film iterations of Sex in Read more ...
aleks.sierz
One of the most talented playwrights to emerge in the 2000s, debbie tucker green is a law unto herself. The best word to describe her is uncompromising. When I interviewed her in 2003 she refused pointblank to answer any questions about her West Indian background and since then she has steadfastly declined to discuss her work in the media. Like Caryl Churchill, she doesn’t do publicity. So that just leaves the work, which is always provocative, original and written in an unmistakable voice.Her latest, Hang, is a short 70-minute piece about a middle-aged black woman whose family has been the Read more ...
Marianka Swain
“We’re completely pro sex.” Rashdash, who collaborated with Alice Birch on this anarchic challenge to pornography, are not objecting on prudish grounds – their concern is the corrosive impact of degrading, dehumanising material. We are all affected, and we all need to seek a solution.The potential of this rallying cry is never quite fulfilled by their 75-minute piece. The militant yet weirdly naïve central pair (Abbi Greenland and Helen Goalen, pictured below with Bettrys Jones) adopts extreme positions to illustrate the scope of the problem, but in focussing on the difficulty of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The young casualty of genius fires imaginations and fills coffers. Last year Dylan Thomas’s centenary was vastly celebrated. The Amy Winehouse industry is still shifting units. The spell cast by Sylvia Plath seems not to diminish. A Janis Joplin biopic project is staggering through the law courts. And then there are Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all the sundry other singers and poets who, by accident or design, cut themselves down in their prime. But in the beginning, the first to die in a lonely garret of a drug overdose, was 17-year-old poet-forger Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A twist on the battle between the sexes and the romance which blooms after the dust has settled, Les Combattants pitches the reticent Arnaud into the path of the intimidating Madelaine. While the outcome is never in doubt, true love is only achieved after navigating a few bumps in the road, most of which result from Madelaine’s feelings that she and the world in general are at war with each other.The fitting title Les Combattants is a neat pun. Not only are Arnaud and Madelaine at loggerheads, they actually begin training for the army, apparently France’s second-biggest employer after Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Supersonic Festival of the weird and the wonderful may now be in its 12th year but it is still more than living up to its long-running tag-line, “For curious audiences”. This year, an eager audience was treated to sets by both the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble and post-metalists Liturgy, as well as most points in between. In fact, for those who like their sounds drawn from beyond the mainstream, Supersonic was again a gold mine of tasty treats – and, as usual, there were also plenty of sights and delights that didn’t involve any music at all. Performance art, audience participation and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
New sci-fi series aren't exactly a dime a dozen on British TV, awash as it usually is with serial killers, cops and costume dramas, so the fact that Humans not only exists but is also bold and fresh-looking triggers instant brownie points. It doubtless helps that it's a collaboration between Channel 4 and America's AMC, home of Mad Men and The Walking Dead. It pitches us into a contemporary London which looks superficially unchanged, but has been rendered utterly alien by the new boom in synthetic humans, or "synths".It seems the Smart TV, the Apple Watch and Mr Dyson's latest dust-sucking Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tommy Tiernan tells us not to take him seriously at the start of his latest show, Out of the Whirlwind. “I’m like a cow mooing for the sake of mooing,” he says – which neatly explains the surreal riffs in a mesmerising 80 minutes, but also lets him off the hook for some of his edgier material. He has often courted controversy in his native Ireland, and there is the occasional line tonight that draws a shocked response from the audience.Tiernan is in full fire-and-brimstone preacher mode when addressing us loudly without the aid of his microphone, other times whispering intimately as if in a Read more ...
Florence Hallett
For all the wrong reasons, the work of Dexter Dalwood serves as a useful metaphor for this exhibition. Trite, tokenistic and desperate to look clever, Dalwood’s paintings are as tiresomely inward-looking as the show itself, which is a dismal example of curatorial self-indulgence at the expense of public engagement. It’s not always a bad thing to give free rein to theorising curators, but this show compares unfavourably with exhibitions at, notably, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Courtauld Gallery that have successfully introduced the public to sound, but arguably arcane academic Read more ...
David Nice
What a difference seven years can make to a budding genius. Mozart’s La finta giardiniera (1775) has only patches of brilliance, and last year’s Glyndebourne production, despite musical excellence, failed them all. This time an experienced director on best form, David McVicar, finds more nuanced humanity in the composer’s first mature German drama, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio, 1782) than I’d have believed possible, mirrored in the light and fire of Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. If you think Mozart’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Lesley Gore: California NightsThe reissue of 1967’s California Nights is a timely tribute to both Lesley Gore, who died in February this year, and Bob Crewe, the producer of most of the album’s tracks, who died in September last year. Gore first charted in 1963 with “It’s my Party”, which was followed by a string of hits including the feminist-slanted “You Don’t Own me”. Crewe was prodigious: he was a songwriter, manager, producer and singer. With Bob Gaudio, he steered The Four Seasons to success and wrote or co-wrote classics like "Big Girls Don't Cry" and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine ( Read more ...