England
Turner Prize 2023, Towner Eastbourne review - four contestants strike a sombre moodTuesday, 10 October 2023
It’s incredible to think that the Turner Prize has been going for nearly 40 years. It was initially set up to generate interest in contemporary art by sparking debate. Not surprisingly, the media took this as an invitation to stir up controversy by... Read more... |
A Voyage Round My Father, Theatre Royal, Bath review - Rupert Everett excels in a play showing its ageSaturday, 07 October 2023
Like theatre itself, the law finds its voice in stories, performance and spectacle. Any law student will, from that very first induction lecture, become suffused in a culture that is informed by and in turn informs theatre, some classes more like an... Read more... |
Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas, Tate Britain review - overcrowding muffles the voice of the wildest of the YBAsMonday, 02 October 2023
I think of Sarah Lucas as the bad girl of British art, the one who uses her wicked sense of humour to point to rampant misogyny and call out the perpetrators. Of her generation of YBAs (Young British Artists), she has produced the edgiest, funniest... Read more... |
Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical, Menier Chocolate Factory review - a tourist's view of a Sixties iconFriday, 29 September 2023
The Biba dresses are way too colourful, the shop’s interior about 10 times too bright… and did anybody really say ”happening threads” in 1965?Taking Ben Elton to task for his portrayal of the Sixties, which feature in the first half of Close-Up, his... Read more... |
Album: Steven Wilson - The Harmony CodexWednesday, 27 September 2023
Steven Wilson has merged various genres – metal, shoegaze, pop, dance, jazz – in his solo career without shrugging off the prog label he considers reductive. He hasn’t exactly jettisoned it with his seventh album The Harmony Codex, a collection of... Read more... |
The Nettle Dress review - a moving story exquisitely toldMonday, 25 September 2023
Lasting just over an hour, The Nettle Dress is like a fairy story. It builds very slowly, each beautifully framed shot contributing toward a perfect little gem that tells a moral tale.A man spends seven years coming to terms with the loss of both... Read more... |
Operation Epsilon, Southwark Playhouse review - alternative OppenheimerSaturday, 23 September 2023
Must science always be dominated by politics? This question is most urgent when the stakes are high – climate change or nuclear weapons. And it is grimly true that the fact that audiences are still interested in the race for the atom bomb between... Read more... |
The Little Big Things, @sohoplace review - real-life story movingly realised onstageTuesday, 19 September 2023
It's rare that a new musical or play opens in the West End with as much positive word-of-mouth as The Little Big Things. Social media has been ablaze over the last few weeks, with critics and bloggers sneaking into previews and authoritative big... Read more... |
A Life on the Farm review - a fabulous eccentric gets neatly packagedFriday, 08 September 2023
“There’s nowt so queer as folk”, they say, and Life on the Farm amply proves the point. A cassette slides into the slot; “play” is pressed and a middle-aged man appears on screen at the gate of Combe End Farm. “Follow me down”, he says to... Read more... |
And Then Come the Nightjars review - two farm friendsThursday, 31 August 2023
This modest British dramedy is billed as a “heart-warming story of friendship and survival set against the backdrop of the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak”. That’s perhaps not the first catastrophe we associate with that fateful year, but it was a grim... Read more... |
Medicine Festival review - the new New Age gathers in leafy BerkshireWednesday, 30 August 2023
Fia is a Swedish singer with a crystalline voice and a ear for a great melody - her singalong choruses are not typical for a festival Friday night headliner, like getting the audience to join in with “Sit with your pain/ cradle it close/ and when... Read more... |
Album: Public Image Limited - End of WorldWednesday, 09 August 2023
The world might end with a whimper or an inferno, but it’s hard to imagine a day will dawn that extinguishes John Lydon’s scorn for other people’s fecklessness and idiocy. That hand-made polemic typically drives the cauterising post-punk hosannahs... Read more... |
