family relationships
CD: Lily Allen - No ShameThursday, 07 June 2018
Lily Allen has long been an unlikely inhabitant of the tabloid sphere. She was born into it and her pop career sealed the deal, rendering her a recalcitrant victim of paparazzi fishbowl idiocy, ugly magazines and online sidebars. She is, however,... Read more... |
The Rink, Southwark Playhouse - lesser-known musical lands afreshWednesday, 06 June 2018
Two dynamite lead performances and the chance to savour an underappreciated score give genuine charge to The Rink, a decades-old Broadway flop that feels reborn for Southwark Playhouse. A short-lived star vehicle for Chita Rivera (who... Read more... |
Killer Joe, Trafalgar Studios review - family drama, creepy and cruelTuesday, 05 June 2018
Right from the beginning of Simon Evans’s production of Tracy Letts's 1993 play, it’s clear we’re in for an intense, raw experience. A storm of almost symphonic musical accompaniment roars, lightning flashing over the claustrophobic trailer... Read more... |
Fatherland, Lyric Hammersmith review - loud and proud, shame about the contentSaturday, 02 June 2018
Masculinity, whether toxic or in crisis (but never ever problem-free), is a hardy perennial subject for British new writing, and this new piece from playwright Simon Stephens, Frantic Assembly director Scott Graham and Underworld musician Karl Hyde... Read more... |
Consent, Harold Pinter Theatre review - exhilaratingWednesday, 30 May 2018
Question: is Consent, transferred from the National to the West End, a sharp-tongued comedy or an acute reinvention of a revenge drama? There are more than enough smartly placed laughs throughout the tart, increasingly taut first act, to make you... Read more... |
Sarah Kendall, Soho Theatre review - a superb storytellerThursday, 17 May 2018
For her past few shows, Sarah Kendall's stock in trade has been intricately crafted stories that mix fact and fiction, drawing on her childhood in Newcastle, New South Wales, and observations about the world she now lives in. Her latest show, One-... Read more... |
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, Brighton Festival review - a dynamic dedication to an artist's museThursday, 10 May 2018
They say that behind every successful man is a strong woman. The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is as much – if not more so – the championing of the unsung hero in this story of the famous early modernist artist, Marc Chagall. His wife, Bella – early muse... Read more... |
Lean on Pete review - a different kind of road tripFriday, 04 May 2018
British director Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete is a heartfelt and surprisingly stark affair. Based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin, the film follows a young boy and his stolen horse across America. Despite its simple premise, Haigh and... Read more... |
Tully review - Charlize Theron plumps for sentimentThursday, 03 May 2018
Inside Tully – or maybe inside Charlize Theron’s massively pregnant belly – is a darker, more daring film trying to get out. There are startlingly original moments, but it’s as if writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, creators of Juno and... Read more... |
Nine Night, National Theatre review - Jamaican family drama full of spiritTuesday, 01 May 2018
The good news about so-called black drama on British stages is that it has broken out of its gangland violence ghetto and now talks about a whole variety of other subjects. Like loss. Like death. Like mourning. So London-born actress Natasha Gordon’... Read more... |
Beast review - mesmerising and murky in equal measureSaturday, 28 April 2018
Two fast-rising actors, Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn, lend genuine flair to a thriller that needs its mesmerising star turns to rise above the murk. Densely plotted, if sometimes suffocatingly so, TV director Michael Pearce's feature film debut... Read more... |
The Deminer review - life on the edge in IraqTuesday, 24 April 2018
Major Fakhir is a deminer, responsible for disarming hundreds of mines around Mosul every week. His American counterparts know him by a different title: Crazy Fakhir, a man who rides the edge of his luck, constantly in imminent danger. Yet to him,... Read more... |
