1930s
Evita, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - a diva dictator for 2019Friday, 09 August 2019
Following a triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ Superstar, now playing at the Barbican, the Park works its magic on another of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Seventies rock operas. Jamie Lloyd’s stripped-down, super-sleek, contemporary take... Read more... |
Prom 15: Bavarian RSO, Nézet-Séguin review - perfect Beethoven, nuanced ShostakovichWednesday, 31 July 2019
While we wish the great Mariss Jansons a speedy recovery, no-one of sound heart and soul could be disappointed by his substitute for the two Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Proms, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose supreme art is to show the score's... Read more... |
Blues in the Night, Kiln Theatre review - hard times, hot tunesThursday, 25 July 2019
It’s too darn hot, BoJo is in Downing Street, and we’re all going to Brexit hell – so we might as well sing the blues. Or at least take a night off from the apocalypse to enjoy a virtuoso company singing them for us in this rousing revival of... Read more... |
The Damned, Comédie-Française, Barbican review - slow-burn horrors in devastating imagesFriday, 21 June 2019
Is the terrifying past of Germany in 1933 also our future? Having had nightmares about the brilliant dystopian TV soap opera Years and Years, which built like all the best of its kind on present fears, I wasn't expecting to be confronted so soon by... Read more... |
Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking, Dulwich Picture Gallery review - a cut aboveWednesday, 19 June 2019
Under a turbulent sky racked with jagged clouds suggesting bolts of lightning, pale figures hurl themselves into a spitting expanse of water. Swathed in white towels, other figures mingle with the pink bodies, seeming to process along the pier as if... Read more... |
Porgy and Bess, Grange Park Opera review - good versus evil in Catfish RowMonday, 10 June 2019
If you go to a British country house opera to see a work about an addict and a cripple in a poverty-stricken Deep South tenement, you know the contrast between stage and garden marquee will be extreme. Seeing Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at Grange... Read more... |
Williams, BBC Philharmonic, Wigglesworth, Bridgewater Hall Manchester review - vision before gloomMonday, 03 June 2019
The BBC Philharmonic have given memorable accounts of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 4 in Manchester before – notably conducted by Günther Herbig in 2010 and by John Storgårds in 2014 – but surely none as harrowingly grim as under Mark Wigglesworth this... Read more... |
Ain't Misbehavin', Southwark Playhouse review - a jazz-hot musical revueThursday, 25 April 2019
The joint is jumpin’ at Southwark Playhouse, now hosting an irresistible Fats Waller-inspired, Manhattan-set musical revue (a co-production with Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, where it opened last month). Though originating in the Seventies,... Read more... |
Red Joan review - Judi Dench can't lift lumbering espionage dramaSaturday, 20 April 2019
The decades-long stage relationship between Judi Dench and Trevor Nunn translates to surprisingly little with Red Joan. This is veteran theatre director Nunn's first film since Twelfth Night in 1996. Top-billed in a supporting role, Dench brings her... Read more... |
Ehnes, BBC Philharmonic, Wilson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - contrasts from the 1930sMonday, 15 April 2019
John Wilson conducted Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony with the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester just over a year ago with great success, in a programme of music from the 1940s. This time it was the very different, troubled Fourth, and the context was... Read more... |
Melzer, Albion Quartet, Birmingham Town Hall review - songs without wordsWednesday, 27 March 2019
This was a fascinating, unexpected prospect; instantly appealing to anyone who’s ever wondered about the string quartet’s niche in the 21st-century musical ecosystem. Two practically new song cycles for soprano and quartet – Kate Whitley’s Charlotte... Read more... |
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Birmingham Opera Company review - searing music-theatre for allThursday, 14 March 2019
A rum cove sidles up pimping with a tatty business card offering the services of Sonyetka. Not for me, I say, pointing out that in any case she’ll be dead three hours later. "That's more than I know," he says and wanders off to hook other possible... Read more... |
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