1940s
DVD: His Girl FridayTuesday, 30 December 2014
His Girl Friday is funny. Very, very funny. It is also crammed with cutting verbiage as sharply delivered as the moves of a complex pas de deux. Yet another no-frills appearance of the 1940 film on home video is not a surprise as – despite being a... Read more... |
Kon-TikiMonday, 15 December 2014
Nothing proves a theory better than practice, and this is exactly what Norwegian adventurer-archaeologist-ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl did in 1947 when he and five companions sailed a raft from Peru to Polynesia to prove his hypothesis of how the... Read more... |
The Imitation GameMonday, 10 November 2014
“He should be on banknotes.” Benedict Cumberbatch has spoken of his character, real-life hero Alan Turing, as if he knew him. Turing, who died in 1954, was the father of computing and, more importantly, a secret WWII hero as told in The Imitation... Read more... |
Ceremony of Innocence/The Age of Anxiety/Aeternum, Royal BalletSaturday, 08 November 2014
English National Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet have staged programmes of war pieces already this year; now here's the Royal Ballet bringing up the rear in its own inimitable (and rather oblique) fashion with a triple bill that picks up on and... Read more... |
quartet-lab, Wigmore HallWednesday, 22 October 2014
Musical theatre needn’t be dominated by the human voice. Instrumental dramas with an element of acting can be a good way into the wonderful world of chamber music for younger audiences, and the Wigmore Hall’s new gambit of special student tickets... Read more... |
Shadows of War, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's WellsSaturday, 18 October 2014
Another week, another war commemorative; it’s the story of all the arts in 2014. But – because you can always rely on David Bintley and Birmingham Royal Ballet to be different – last night’s programme at Sadler’s was overshadowed by the Second World... Read more... |
I, CULTURE Orchestra, Karabits, Usher Hall, EdinburghMonday, 18 August 2014
It is easy to be blinded by the sensational history of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, the “Leningrad”. We cannot forget the famous performance by a starving makeshift orchestra in August 1942, at the height of the siege of Leningrad, or the... Read more... |
Quartet for the End of Time, Greyfriars Kirk, EdinburghTuesday, 12 August 2014
If you want an image that defines, for this writer at least, the essence of the Edinburgh Festival, it is the sight of Greyfriars Kirk full to capacity at 5.30 pm on a blustery Monday afternoon. At other times of year this sort of event might be... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Hadda BrooksSunday, 03 August 2014
Hadda Brooks: Queen of the Boogie and MoreThe rolling piano is irresistible. Upbeat and swinging, it powers forward with an unstoppable momentum. Accompanied by walking double bass and brushed two-step drums, the right hand suddenly peels off... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 29 July 2014
One of the reasons I always tell ballet sceptics to give Romeo and Juliet a go is that any production with halfway decent lovers and a vaguely competent rendition of Prokofiev’s score should convince them that this art form isn’t just about swans... Read more... |
Café Society Swing, Leicester Square TheatreWednesday, 18 June 2014
Alex Webb’s musical Café Society Swing, about a provocatively liberal Manhattan jazz club in the 1940s, made a much-anticipated return to the Leicester Square Theatre last night. With remarkable ingenuity and economy, Webb tells the story of the... Read more... |
Spring in a Small TownMonday, 16 June 2014
Shanghai director Fei Mu’s final film Spring in a Small Town appeared at the end of an era, coming out in 1948, a year before revolution engulfed China. The subsequent upheaval saw the director branded a “rightist”, or reactionary (he fled to Hong... Read more... |
