cabaret
Effigies of Wickedness, Gate Theatre review - this sleek cabaret conceals desolation behind a smileThursday, 17 May 2018
The show’s subtitle – “Songs banned by the Nazis” – is a catchy one, and somewhere under the confetti, the stilettos, the extravagant nudity, the sequins and even shinier repartee that are wrapped around Effigies of Wickedness like a mink coat on... Read more... |
Hailey Tuck, Rich Mix review - delightful but wobblyWednesday, 16 May 2018
At the age of 18, Texan jazz singer Hailey Tuck cashed in her college fund for a one-way plane ticket. leaving a military boarding school in Texas for the Voltaire district of Paris, to immerse herself in jazz clubs and vintage markets. Nearly a... Read more... |
Picks of Brighton Festival 2018 by writer-director Neil BartlettThursday, 03 May 2018
Director, playwright and novelist Neil Bartlett has been making theatre and causing trouble since the 1980s. He made his name with a series of controversial stark naked performances staged in clubs and warehouses, then went on to... Read more... |
Mum, BBC Two, series 2 review - Lesley Manville is a discreet delightWednesday, 21 February 2018
This week brings a tale of two comedies. Both half-hour sitcoms are about widowed mothers with grown-up sons still at home. Each woman has an unattached admirer. Both shows star fine comic actresses who learned much of their craft in the films of... Read more... |
Emil Nolde: Colour Is Life, National Gallery of Ireland review - boats, dancers, flowersThursday, 15 February 2018
Colours had meanings for Emil Nolde. “Yellow can depict happiness and also pain. Red can mean fire, blood or roses; blue can mean silver, the sky or a storm.” As the son of a German-Frisian father and a Schleswig-Dane mother, Nolde was raised in a... Read more... |
Carmen, Royal Opera review - clever concept, patchy singing, sexy dancingWednesday, 07 February 2018
Roll up, dépêchez-vous, for Carmen the - what? Circus? Vaudeville/music-hall/cabaret? Opéra-ballet, post-Rameau? Not, certainly, a show subject to the kind of updated realism which has been applied by just about every production other than the... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Composer, chansonnier and conductor HK Gruber at 75Thursday, 04 January 2018
You haven't lived until you've witnessed Viennese maverick H(einz) K(arl) Gruber – 75 today (3 January, publication day) – speech-singing, conducting and kazooing his way through his self-styled "pandemonium" Frankenstein!!. Composed for chansonnier... Read more... |
La Soirée, Aldwych Theatre review - flickers of brilliance in a patchy eveningThursday, 07 December 2017
La Soirée is on the up-and-up. Beginning life as an after-hours show at the fringes of the Fringe in 2004, it won an Olivier in 2015 and has landed its first West End residency, a two-month run at the Aldwych Theatre over Christmas. Its acts –... Read more... |
CD: Paloma Faith - The ArchitectSaturday, 18 November 2017
Over the last few months Paloma Faith has been talking up her fourth album, The Architect. There were self-perpetuated rumours of her rockin’ out, going off at a completely fresh musical angle, with lyrical content that sidestepped pop's usual... Read more... |
12 Stone Toddler, Green Door Store, Brighton review – experimentalism can still be popMonday, 24 July 2017
Ten years ago Brighton band 12 Stone Toddler burst onto the scene with two off-the-wall albums of madly inventive pop-rock. They then vamoosed back out of existence. Now they’re back, preparing a third album for the Freshly Squeezed label, and... Read more... |
Pink Martini, Brighton DomeFriday, 14 April 2017
"An Evening with Pink Martini" consists of two sets by the Portland, Oregon group/mini-orchestra. Of these, the first takes the prize, but only by a very short lead. During it the nine-piece, led by Thomas Lauderdale at the piano, seem to relax and... Read more... |
Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President, Channel 4Wednesday, 18 January 2017
Tom Lehrer famously declared satire dead when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger not long after he'd bombed Cambodia back to the Middle Ages. Lehrer never wrote another song. Meanwhile other satirists battle on. Every day... Read more... |
