England
Richard III, Shakespeare's Globe review - Michelle Terry riffs with punk bravadoThursday, 23 May 2024
There’s a fierce, dark energy to the Globe’s new Richard III that I don’t recall at that venue for a fair while. The drilled cast dances seemed more frenzied, and there are more of them, and for once let’s start with a shout-out for James Maloney’s... Read more... |
Album: Beth Gibbons - Lives OutgrownMonday, 13 May 2024
It’s been a long while since Beth Gibbons released an album. Portishead’s Third was out in 2008. She has lived through so many changes since, and, even though her signature is still very much in glorious evidence, Lives Outgrown represents a... Read more... |
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger review - the Archers up closeFriday, 10 May 2024
This long, fascinating documentary was apparently intended as the centrepiece of last autumn’s BFI celebration of the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. But Made in England was delayed while Martin Scorsese (executive producer,... Read more... |
An Actor Convalescing in Devon, Hampstead Theatre review - old school actor tells old school storiesWednesday, 17 April 2024
One can often be made to feel old in the theatre. A hot take in a snappy 90 minutes (with video!) on the latest Gen Z obsession (is it even Gen Z, or were they last year, Daddio?) can leave one baffled or wondering whose gripe is it anyway.... Read more... |
Richard, My Richard, Theatre Royal Bury St Edmund's review - too much history, not enough dramaTuesday, 16 April 2024
History is very present in Philippa Gregory’s new play about Richard III. Literally - History is a character, played by Tom Kanji. He strides around in a pale trenchcoat, at first rather too glib and pleased with himself, but quickly sucked into the... Read more... |
Player Kings, Noel Coward Theatre review - inventive showcase for a peerless theatrical knightMonday, 15 April 2024
Shakespeare’s plays have ever been meat for masher-uppers, from the bowdlerising Victorians to the modern filmed-theatre cycles of Ivo Van Hove. And Sir John Falstaff, as Orson Welles proved in Chimes at Midnight, can be the star of his very own... Read more... |
Back to Black review - rock biopic with a loving but soft touchFriday, 12 April 2024
Sam Taylor-Johnson has fashioned her biopic of Amy Winehouse with great care and affection, but sometimes, as she shows her subject discovering, love isn’t quite enough. The superb jazz-inflected singer from north London, who in 2011 joined the... Read more... |
Gunter, Royal Court review - jolly tale of witchcraft and misogynyTuesday, 09 April 2024
Many an Edinburgh Fringe transfer has struggled when it moves to the big city, but the Dirty Hare company’s Gunter, sensibly embedded in the Royal Court’s intimate Upstairs space, has settled in nicely, thanks.Originally staged at the best Fringe... Read more... |
First Person: actor Paul Jesson on survival, strength, and the healing potential of artMonday, 08 April 2024
In September 2022 I had an email from my American friend Richard Nelson: "Would you like me to write you a play?" Such an offer probably comes the way of very few actors and I was bowled over by it. My astonished and grateful response was tempered... Read more... |
Silver Haze review - daughters of Albion dealing with damageMonday, 01 April 2024
In a Dagenham hospital, Silver Haze’s compassionate nurse Franky, played by Vicky Knight, meets Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles), who’s been admitted as a patient for having attempted suicide. After Franky dumps her boyfriend, the two women begin a... Read more... |
First Person: author-turned-actor Lydia Higman on a play that foregrounds a slice of forgotten historyThursday, 28 March 2024
I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead to our play Gunter [seen first in Edinburgh and transferring 3-25 April to the Royal Court]. The... Read more... |
Death In Venice, Welsh National Opera review - breathtaking BrittenSaturday, 23 March 2024
Benjamin Britten’s last opera Death in Venice (1973), adapted from Thomas Mann’s novella of the same name (1912) and the subject of one of Visconti’s later, most celebrated films, explores homoerotic attraction, the nature of beauty and the... Read more... |
