family relationships
Now This Is Not the End, Arcola TheatreSaturday, 06 June 2015
Few cities have been so central to the European imagination as Berlin in the 20th century. At the centre of imperial power, then of Weimar, next the hub of Nazi Germany, then for some 50 years a symbol of a divided Cold War world. In Rose Lewenstein... Read more... |
San AndreasFriday, 29 May 2015
Time gets called on California in San Andreas, a bone-headed disaster movie that sends huge swathes of the West Coast toppling to its doom even as one particular family not only makes it through intact but is even enriched in the process. Who'd have... Read more... |
DVD: FoxcatcherFriday, 15 May 2015
As he died in 2010, we can never know what John du Pont was like in person, but if Steve Carell’s rendering of the maniacal American multi-millionaire with a wrestling fixation is even close to the real thing, the experience must have been... Read more... |
The Affair, Sky AtlanticThursday, 14 May 2015
Already a couple of Golden Globes to the good after debuting in the States last year, The Affair effortlessly hit its stride as it landed in Blighty. This opening double episode began generating a subtle miasma of intrigue and vague menace from the... Read more... |
The Father, Tricycle TheatreWednesday, 13 May 2015
André is losing time. It’s not just his perennially mislaid watch, but whole hours, weeks, years. Is he still living in his Paris flat, or did he move in with his daughter Anne? Is she married, divorced, leaving the country with a new boyfriend? And... Read more... |
Hay Fever, Duke of York's TheatreTuesday, 12 May 2015
"I sometimes wish we were more normal," sighs one of the adult Bliss children in Noel Coward’s country-house comedy. But it’s her family’s self-dramatising abnormality that provides both the froth and the substance of this early play, written in a... Read more... |
The Apple Family Plays, Brighton DomeWednesday, 06 May 2015
"I hear America singing," wrote Walt Whitman, the American poet whose language playwright Richard Nelson has co-opted for the title of the second (Sweet and Sad) of his remarkable quartet of Apple Family Plays. And those wanting to know what song is... Read more... |
Stray DogsTuesday, 05 May 2015
Whatever you make of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs (Jiao you), it’ll likely have you looking at your watch. If you’re hypnotized by its almost narrative-free, stretched naturalism – stretched so far as to become effectively... Read more... |
Lungs, Roundabout at Regency Square, BrightonTuesday, 05 May 2015
A couple stand on the stage, squaring up to each other. They are in the middle of an argument. The Man has just, out of the blue, suggested they have a baby. The Woman, understandably, needs time to adjust to the idea. Particularly as they are in... Read more... |
ExitMonday, 20 April 2015
Taiwanese director Chienn Hsiang has given his lead actress Chen Shiang-chyi a role of rare complexity in Exit, and she dominates this bleakly naturalistic slice-of-life film completely. Chen’s character, Ling, is a seamstress approaching middle age... Read more... |
Force MajeureFriday, 10 April 2015
The fault-lines of human relationships are tested in Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, and prove much more fraught than the physical threat inherent in the film’s glorious alpine landscapes. Its opening scenes capture a Swedish couple... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bilbao: Niki de Saint Phalle at the Guggenheim MuseumThursday, 02 April 2015
This is work that wears its heart on its sleeve. That’s what gets you in the end in this big retrospective of the work of Niki de Saint Phalle. The French-American artist, who died aged 71 in 2002, is probably best known for two very different... Read more... |
