childhood
Peter Pan, Troubadour White City review - off to a flying startMonday, 29 July 2019
London’s Troubadour White City theatre has got off to a, literally, flying start. Sally Cookson‘s National Theatre-Bristol Old Vic adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic makes an exuberant comeback at this new venue, whose technical possibilities allow... Read more... |
The Turn of the Screw, Garsington Opera review - superb music drama on an open stageFriday, 05 July 2019
The famous ambiguity of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is whether the ghosts that take possession of the two children are real or merely figments of the young Governess’s imagination. Britten’s opera resolves this unequivocally in favour of... Read more... |
Toy Story 4 review - fabulous return to the big screenThursday, 20 June 2019
Making it to the fourth film in a series and maintaining quality is a feat pulled off by very few franchises, (see last week’s dreary Men in Black: International). But Pixar has done it with Toy Story 4. It might not have quite as many nifty... Read more... |
Bronx Gothic, Young Vic review - fervid intensityMonday, 10 June 2019
It’s hard, and finally fruitless to attempt to describe Okwui Okpokwasili’s Bronx Gothic in conventional terms of genre: combining elements of dance and theatre, this visceral solo performance transcends both. It engages with frantic movement at the... Read more... |
Too Late To Die Young review - an absorbing, Chilean coming-of-ageSaturday, 25 May 2019
Chilean Dominga Sotomayor’s third feature is a beautifully crafted example of the kind of Latin drama that is slow-burn and sensorial, conveying emotion through gestures and looks rather than dialogue or action. Nothing much seems to be happening,... Read more... |
Vox Motus: Flight, Brighton Festival 2019 review - a novel and moving experienceSunday, 05 May 2019
Flight is a show by experimental Scottish theatre company Vox Motus, adapted from the novel Hinterland by Caroline Brothers. It’s about two Afghan child refugees making their way across Europe to the fabled land of “London” and is based very... Read more... |
Mid90s review – rise of a skate gang tyroWednesday, 10 April 2019
There’s an admirable modesty in the way Jonah Hill has approached his first film as writer-director. The popular actor (Superbad, Moneyball, The Wolf of Wall Street) has taken a low-key indie approach to Mid90s, his gently humorous coming-of-age... Read more... |
Minding the Gap review – profound musings on lifeFriday, 22 March 2019
Where would you go for a devastating study on the human condition? The home movies of teenage skaters would be very low down on that list. But most of those movies aren’t filmed, compiled and analysed by Bing Liu, the director of Minding the Gap.... Read more... |
Downstate, National Theatre review - controversial but also clear-eyed and compassionateThursday, 21 March 2019
"Some monsters are real," notes a retribution-minded wife (Matilda Ziegler) early in Downstate, Bruce Norris's beautiful and wounding play that has arrived at the National Theatre in the production of a writer's dreams. But by the time this restless... Read more... |
Leaving Neverland: Michael Jackson and Me, Channel 4 review - sordid revelations from the court of the King of PopThursday, 07 March 2019
Not just the Peter Pan of Pop, but also its very own Houdini. With the aid of shed-loads of money, an illusion-spinning PR machine and the most aggressive lawyers that money could buy, Michael Jackson managed to make it to his premature exit in 2009... Read more... |
The Kid Who Would Be King review - a timeless charmerFriday, 15 February 2019
The Arthurian legend’s tight fit as a Brexit allegory perhaps proves how timeless it is as, buried and bound in the earth by Merlin, Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson) senses the land above is “lost and leaderless”, and ripe for her apocalyptic return.This... Read more... |
Jellyfish review - life on the edge in MargateWednesday, 13 February 2019
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside – well perhaps not, if Jellyfish is anything to go by. Set in Margate, this independent feature paints a picture of a town and people that have been left behind. Cut from the same cloth as Ken Loach’s I, Daniel... Read more... |
