mon 17/06/2024

cabaret

Joanna MacGregor, Wigmore Hall/ Sol Picó, Sadler's Wells Theatre

Joanna MacGregor: She turned Bach and Shostakovich into something like electronic piano music

The two-course evening out is made possible by the Wigmore Hall’s late Friday-night concerts, so if you get out of a central-London show - or dinner - by, say, 9.30, you can add a second layer of entertainment at 10. In my case, a ferociously poor...

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Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Apocrifu/ Gardenia, Brighton Festival

Apocrypha is a word that has acquired a dubious meaning, for books of questioned value and authenticity, texts in various religions that may not necessarily be held divine. The Belgian-Moroccan dancemaker Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's dance work Apocrifu...

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The Mummers, King's College London

In the lager-carpeted sweat box that is the KCL student union it was hard to fault The Mummers. There are some concerts where band and audience seem so lost in a private world that you can almost forget that the humdrum, everyday world even...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Berg, Bruckner, Spoliansky

'Music of Tribute: Alban Berg': 'Serious, rewarding music for serious times'

This weekend's classical highlights comprise an eloquent tribute to a 20th-century master, entertaining cabaret songs from Weimar-era Berlin and some sublime Bruckner choral music recorded by an Edinburgh choir.Music of Tribute: Alban Berg Ieva...

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Miloš Karadaglić, LPO Foyle Future Firsts, 100 Club

Bear with me while, like supergroomed rising star Miloš Karadaglić retuning his guitar to a mellower vein, I adjust my concert-hall vocab and describe this as a no-gimmicks sell-out gig underground with young musicians from the London Philharmonic’s...

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Paul Heaton, Koko

After a couple of false starts, former Beautiful South frontman Paul Heaton’s last solo album finally received the high critical praise of the old days. But at 49 you can’t imagine him really caring too much about anyone else’s approval. This is the...

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Shoes, Peacock Theatre

It is perfectly true that, as Arthur Marshall once said of Ibsen, I am Not a Fun One. A party really is a party without me there. And Shoes, now transferred from Sadler’s Wells, is not much of a party, whether I’m there or not. Conceived in cynicism...

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The Irrepressibles, Gabby Young & Other Animals, Barbican

The Irrepressibles: Chamber-poptastic

A midwinter night’s dream at the Barbican. Those who like their pop music performed by chaps with jeans, preferably gazing at their shoes, and are attached to certain ideas of authenticity would have run screaming for the exit. The Irrepressibles...

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The Animals and Children Took to the Streets, 1927, Battersea Arts Centre

Welcome to the stinking, sprawling Bayou Mansions – the thorn in a prosperous city’s side, the “short-and-curly hair in the mouthful of sponge cake”. So cramped there isn’t even room to swing a rat (and there are plenty), so corrosive that...

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The X Factor 2010, Week 9, ITV1

Another week, another “fix” in the glorious cavalcade of manipulation, ill-feeling, class hatred, allegations of racism and – oh yes – singing that is The X Factor. This week it was another shift in the rules, seemingly in order to allow the judges...

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Frisky and Mannish, Touring

Frisky and Mannish: Laura Corcoran and Matthew Jones deliver a very original musical 'lecture'

Felicity Fitz-Frisky and Hansel Amadeus Mannish (aka Laura Corcoran and Matthew Jones) describe their act as “twisted pop cabaret” but that doesn’t begin to encapsulate a show that expertly parodies modern music. An easy target, you think, but this...

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Shoes, Sadler's Wells Theatre

The Health and Safety number: You too can leave your 'shoe-fession' on the Sadler's Wells site

Every time I go to Sadler’s Wells now I come out wondering if there’s something wrong with my hearing, so loud and numbing are their speakers. It’s a blight on a lot of shows, but on none more so than Shoes, because this is the first major London...

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