wed 13/11/2024

England

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, BBC One review - handsome finale for Hilary Mantel adaptation

“Previously on Wolf Hall…” It’s been nine years since Claire Foy memorably trembled her way to the block as Anne Boleyn, recapped at the start of the second and final season of the BBC’s handsome Hilary Mantel adaptation. It’s a deathbound affair...

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Bird review - travails of an unseen English tween

There’s a jolt or a surprise in almost every shot in Andrea Arnold’s Bird – her most impacted and energised depiction of underclass life yet. Photographed by Robbie Ryan, it’s a visual tour de force, one of the most exhilarating British films of...

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Blu-ray: The Oblong Box

The Oblong Box is a phantom 1969 follow-up to Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General, sharing star Vincent Price and much cast and crew, after the brilliant young British director’s OD forced his dismissal days before shooting. It also began...

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Industry, BBC One review - bold, addictive saga about corporate culture now

All three seasons of Industry are now on iPlayer, and after watching the most recent one and then backtracking for another look at the other two, I am still in two minds about it. With its forensic display of a toxic world where people are viewed as...

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Vanessa Bell, MK Gallery review - diving into and out of abstraction

The Bloomsbury group’s habit of non-binary bed-hopping has frequently attracted more attention than the artworks they produced. But in their Vanessa Bell retrospective, the MK Gallery has steered blissfully clear of salacious tittle tattle....

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Blu-ray: Michael Powell - Early Works

The missing element is magic, the swooning sense of the romantic, spiritual and supernal which Michael Powell’s partnership with Emeric Pressburger found in the British and especially English soul, sharpened by Hungarian Pressburger’s fascinated...

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First Person: Tim Etchells on 40 years of making a noise with Forced Entertainment

Forced Entertainment is a theatre company based in Sheffield, touring original performances around the world. The core group of 6 artists has been working together for 40 years, often inviting others to collaborate on particular projects. From the...

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Portraits of Dangerous Women review - quirky indie comedy

“I like laws and rules,” Steph (Jeany Spark), a jaded primary school teacher, tells a pet-shop employee – she’s adopting a cat, though that venture is doomed to failure - defensively. “They’re what separate us from the monkeys and chaos.”In...

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Bellringers, Hampstead Theatre review - mordant comedy about the end of the world

As hurricanes rip into the American Gulf states with increasing ferocity, Eastern Europe disappears underwater and even the gentle British rain becomes a deluge, the arrival of Daisy Hall’s debut play Bellringers at Hampstead Theatre’s Downstairs...

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Angry and Young, Almeida Theatre review - vigorous and illuminating double bill

Why should we not look back in anger? With the Oasis reunion tour in the news recently, the title of John Osborne’s seminal kitchen-sink drama – which kicked off the whole cultural phenomenon of the Angry Young Men on its first staging in 1956 – has...

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The Old Man and the Land review - dark secrets of a farming family

The Old Man and the Land depicts a worn-out sheep farmer going about his dreary business as the seasons pass, darkly and dankly. He does it because he’s always done it, and because he doesn’t trust his 42-year-old daughter, Laura, despite her...

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Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning review - riding the wave

Last year, Wendy Cope’s poem, "The Orange", went viral on TikTok. I’m not totally certain how a poem goes viral, but it did – and there’s nothing we can do about it.In fact, Faber & Faber actively did something about it and released a selection...

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