1940s
Hedda, Orange Tree Theatre review - a monument reimagined, perhaps even improvedWednesday, 29 October 2025
Hedda Gabler is a Hollywood star of The Golden Age – or rather, she was. She walked off the set of two movies into a five-film deal and didn’t come back. Millions watched her, but only a very select few saw her, and that paradox became insupportable... Read more... |
Albert Herring, English National Opera review - a great comedy with depths fully realisedTuesday, 14 October 2025
Britten’s Albert Herring is one of the great 20th century comic operas; only Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest draw such whole-hearted laughter. If it’s never been performed in the London Coliseum before, that’s... Read more... |
Lee Miller, Tate Britain review - an extraordinary career that remains an enigmaSaturday, 04 October 2025
Tate Britain’s Lee Miller retrospective begins with a soft focus picture of her by New York photographer Arnold Genthe dated 1927, when she was working as a fashion model. The image is so hazy that she appears as dreamlike and insubstantial as a... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: writer and actor Mark Gatiss on 'Bookish'Tuesday, 22 July 2025
Having played Sherlock Holmes’s politically involved older brother Mycroft in the BBC’s hit crime series Sherlock, Mark Gatiss may not be an obvious candidate to now follow in the footsteps of the famous detective. But with his new murder ... Read more... |
Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a bomb-battered LondonMonday, 21 July 2025
As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories, Mark Gatiss is no stranger to enigmatic crimes and bizarre occurrences set in carefully-recreated versions of the past. He revisits similar themes in Bookish, his new series about... Read more... |
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire review - a mysterious silenceSaturday, 19 July 2025
A glamorous black woman sits in a Forties bar under a Vichy cop’s gaze, cigarette tilted at an angle, till two male companions join her in clandestine conversation. The woman is Suzanne Césaire (Zita Hanrot), an influential Martinican journalist and... Read more... |
Nye, National Theatre review - Michael Sheen's full-blooded Bevan returns to the OlivierFriday, 11 July 2025
The National Health Service was established 77 years ago this month. Resident doctors are about to strike for more pay, long waiting lists for hospital treatment and the scarcity of GP appointments continue to dog political conversation, while the... Read more... |
Ithell Colquhoun, Tate Britain review - revelations of a weird and wonderful worldTuesday, 17 June 2025
Tate Britain is currently offering two exhibitions for the price of one. Other than being on the same bill, Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun having nothing in common other than being born a year apart and being oddballs – in very different ways.... Read more... |
The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testamentTuesday, 13 May 2025
“It is so disgraceful, what happened there,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, in a comment that is the understatement of the century. She is referring to the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was... Read more... |
Riefenstahl review - fascinating fascism? Portrait of the Nazis' favourite film-makerFriday, 09 May 2025
There used to be an unwritten rule among BBC commissioners about how long an interval had to pass before greenlighting a new documentary on a familiar subject – Shakespeare, Ancient Egypt, Andy Warhol – they all came round again with a decent... Read more... |
Farewell Mister Haffmann, Park Theatre review - French hit of confusing genre, with a real historical villainWednesday, 12 March 2025
When Yasmina Reza’s cerebral play Art arrived in London in 1996, we applauded it as a comedy. Now another French hit, Jean-Philippe Daguerre’s Adieu Monsieur Haffmann, has landed, and the genre confusions could start all over again.This is a story... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Stray DogTuesday, 04 February 2025
Kurosawa’s 1949 thriller probes post-war morality in a Tokyo whose ruins and US occupation mostly remain just out of shot, in a heatwave causing mistakes and madness. The theft of callow detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune)’s police pistol on a... Read more... |
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