fri 29/03/2024

1930s

Benedetti, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - essays in transparency

Nicola Benedetti and Sir Mark Elder are both in the enviable position of being able to take audiences with them into music territory that might scare some away. So it was a gratifyingly near-capacity house that heard Szymanowski’s Second Violin...

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All Creatures Great and Small Christmas Special, Channel 5 review - life during wartime with the Yorkshire vets

As the third series of All Creatures… ended a couple of months ago, Britain had just declared itself at war with Germany and the men of Darrowby were queuing resolutely in the town square to join the armed forces. Intriguingly, as the credits rolled...

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Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - Scrooge goes to Tennessee

We’ve had 75 years to get used to Scrooge McDuck, so we can hardly complain if the Americans indulge in a little cultural appropriation and send Charles Dickens’ misanthrope to Depression-era Tennessee for another whirl on the catharsis-redemption...

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All Creatures Great and Small, Series 3 finale, Channel 5 review - revived vet show still strikes a popular note

Ben Vanstone, the showrunner for Channel 5’s hit revival of All Creatures Great and Small, originally foresaw it as stretching over four seasons, but has subsequently revised his opinion. With the third series ending and the fourth already in...

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Good, Harold Pinter Theatre review - brilliant but half-baked

“The bands came in 1933.” So begins C P Taylor’s Good, a play that tries its hardest to resist being Googled. It was first performed by the RSC in 1981; this production, starring David Tennant as a mild-mannered German professor who gradually...

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Blu-ray: Kuhle Wampe

Kuhle Wampe is a fascinating curio, a blend of documentary, social realist drama and political debate which so bothered the German authorities upon its release in 1932 that they promptly banned it. The censorship board’s justification condemned the...

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Anything Goes, Barbican review - shipboard frivolity still fizzes, mostly

This is the summer, in musical theatre terms at least, of the revival of the revival, with several recent remountings of iconic titles (South Pacific, now in London previews) getting a renewed lease on life, alongside the likes of My Fair Lady,...

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Gillam, Brodsky Quartet, Manchester Camerata, Buxton International Festival 2022 review - a freshness in classic Elgar

It’s an ill heatwave that brings nobody any good, and Buxton International Festival’s decision to move its highlight concert, by Manchester Camerata with Jess Gillam and the Brodsky Quartet as their guests, from the Buxton Octagon to St John’s...

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Hughes, Manchester Collective, Hallé St Peter’s, Manchester review - new work and stunning singing

Manchester Collective were back on home ground last night in the tour of a programme featuring the first performances of a new song cycle by Edmund Finnis, Out of the Dawn’s Mind. Soprano soloist was the amazing Ruby Hughes.It was home ground for...

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The Glass Menagerie, Duke of York's Theatre review - memories flare and fade

The stage is cluttered with objects; a pianola sits stage left; a large cabinet, soon to be revealed as a display case for tiny glass ornaments, dominates the centre. A man, gaunt, in his 40s perhaps, wanders among this stuff.He is our narrator (...

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Bonnie & Clyde, Arts Theatre review - great songs, but plot fires too many blanks

One of the more irritating memes (it’s a competitive field, I know) is the “Name a more iconic couple” appearing over a photo of Posh and Becks, or Harry and Megan, or Leo and whoever. I’ve always been tempted to close the discussion down with a...

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Hallé Choir, BBC Philharmonic, Davis, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - celebrating Vaughan Williams

Continuing the joint BBC Philharmonic/Hallé celebration of Vaughan Williams, Sir Andrew Davis took on the job of presenting three substantial works on Saturday.Toward the Unknown Region has given its title to the entire series, not a bad choice of...

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