2010s
It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure, Soho Theatre review - disability-led comedy hits hardMonday, 01 May 2023
Just when you’ve relaxed a little, privilege duly checked and confident that you won’t be guilt-tripped for nipping into that disabled loo a few years ago at the National (c’mon, the interval was nearly over and needs must), FlawBored drop a bomb... Read more... |
Album: The Zombies - Different GameThursday, 30 March 2023
There’s something charmingly unassuming and humble about The Zombies. Nowadays their 1968 second album Odyssey and Oracle regularly figures in all time greatest albums lists, but it was a flop at the time and its reputation grew through a gradually... Read more... |
Standing at the Sky's Edge, National Theatre review - razor-sharp musical with second-act woesTuesday, 21 February 2023
Buildings can hold memories, the three dimensions of space supplemented by the fourth of time. Ten years ago, I started every working week with a meeting in a room that, for decades, had been used to conduct autopsies – I felt a little chill... Read more... |
Smoke, Southwark Playhouse review - dazzling Strindberg updateMonday, 06 February 2023
A play’s title can be an almost arbitrary matter – there’s no streetcar but plenty of desire in that one for example – and it might have crossed Kim Davies’ mind to call her play Ms Julie, since it is a reimagining of August Strindberg’s... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Guerrilla Girlsǃ - She-Punks & Beyond 1975-2016Sunday, 01 January 2023
In December 1977, the music weekly Sounds included an article about the County Durham punk band Penetration. By Jon Savage, it was headlined The Future Is Female. The same four words would be used by the band for their promotional badges.Penetration... Read more... |
Hewitt, Hallé, Schuldt, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - lightening the gloomFriday, 25 November 2022
If there was a certain doom-laden dimension to Clemens Schuldt’s Bridgewater Hall programme with the Hallé ( … Requiem … Mozart in D minor … Strauss describing Death and …), it was easily lightened by the conductor’s own approach and personality.... Read more... |
Clutch, Bush Theatre review - new comedy-drama passes its testThursday, 22 September 2022
Max is big and black and Tyler is slight and (very) white, an odd couple trapped in a dual-control car as Max barks out his instructions and Tyler prepares for his driving test. If their relationship is to get started, like the clutch of the... Read more... |
La donna del lago, Buxton International Festival 2022 review - Rossini’s romanticism for todayFriday, 15 July 2022
Buxton International Festival’s opera scene is clearly back on track for 2022, and its most substantial production a taut and tension-filled presentation of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago.Jacopo Spirei’s production, with design by Madeleine Boyd, has... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Judex - Cult of JudexSunday, 10 July 2022
A compilation album titled Pennsylvania Unknowns was issued in 1982. Its 17 tracks chronicled the US state’s Sixties garage rock and psychedelic scenes. Amongst the bands included were Pat Farrell & The Believers, The Flowerz, The Loose Enz and... Read more... |
Album: Arcade Fire -WEThursday, 05 May 2022
When the pandemic closed in, Canadian experimental indie rock troupe Arcade Fire were on the cusp of heading into the studio to record their new album. COVID had other plans. But rather than pause, the husband and wife duo of Win and Regine... Read more... |
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Charing Cross Theatre review - Tony-winning play checks out ChekhovWednesday, 17 November 2021
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike has taken eight years to reach the London stage, which is surprisingly long for the Tony Award winner for Best Play of 2013: the pandemic, unsurprisingly, didn't help. But in a burst of somewhat un-Chekhovian... Read more... |
Milk and Gall, Theatre 503 review - motherhood in the age of TrumpThursday, 11 November 2021
Tuesday, 8 November 2016. Vera is in a New York hospital room giving birth to a son. On anxiously checked phones, the votes are piling up for Hillary, but the states are piling up for Trump. Vera’s world will never be the same again.Mathilde Dratwa’... Read more... |
