Greece
Blue Planet II, BBC One review - just how fragile?Monday, 11 December 2017
The eel is dying. Its body flits through a series of complicated knots which become increasingly grotesque torques. Immersed in a pool of brine — concentrated salt water five times denser than seawater — it is succumbing to toxic shock. As biomatter... Read more... |
The Killing of a Sacred Deer review - edge-of-seat psycho-thrillerFriday, 03 November 2017
At first glance, the meetings between heart surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) and a 16-year-old boy, Martin (Barry Keoghan), lead one to fear the worst for the kid. Their stilted exchanges in public places, during which the man gives the teen... Read more... |
L'Orfeo, EBS, Gardiner, Colston Hall, BristolMonday, 29 May 2017
This last of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s semi-staged Monteverdi series took us back practically to the very start of the whole genre. L’Orfeo was presented in Mantua in 1607 as a court opera, and will have been seen and heard by a fraction of the... Read more... |
Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, EBS, Gardiner, Colston Hall, BristolThursday, 13 April 2017
“Never give one concert if you can give a hundred” might stand as a motto for the conductor who once hauled his choir and orchestra round the world performing all 200 or so of Bach’s cantatas. And mathematically Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s latest... Read more... |
Oreste, Royal Opera, Wilton's Music HallWednesday, 09 November 2016
Human sacrifice and long-term reconciliation are serious matters for music-drama. Not that you'd know it from Handel's pasticcio or confectionary of previous operatic hits, nor from Gerard Jones's one-note production. For strip-cartoon violence... Read more... |
CD: Marsheaux - Ath.LonSaturday, 30 July 2016
Right now we’re at the heart of the silly season. In mid-August no-one releases albums (it’s the same in January). Here at Disc of the Day we’re screaming for something decent to review. But, no, microscopic bands choose to hold their albums back... Read more... |
ChevalierTuesday, 19 July 2016
The opening shot of Chevalier trains the camera on a rocky beach surmounted by overcast skies. A dark form emerges from the water, then another and another. They're like creatures from the primordial soup making land all those millions of years ago... Read more... |
Sunken Cities: Egypt's lost worlds rediscoveredTuesday, 24 May 2016
In a gallery darkened to evoke the seabed that was its resting place for over a thousand years, the colossal figure of Hapy, the Egyptian god of the Nile flood, greets visitors just as it met sailors entering the busy trading port of Thonis-... Read more... |
Brighton Festival: Yanis Varoufakis, Brighton DomeWednesday, 11 May 2016
Maybe rock star economists are what we need. Former Greek finance minister Varoufakis’s bullish good looks, charisma and verbal fireworks failed to charm the Troika technocrats who finally banished him from government during last year’s infamous... Read more... |
Medea, Almeida TheatreFriday, 02 October 2015
With her strong, often fierce features and her convincing simulations of rage, Kate Fleetwood might have been born to play Medea. Unfortunately this isn’t Euripides’ Medea but Rachel Cusk’s free variations on the myth rather than the play. Many... Read more... |
Building the Ancient City: Athens, BBC TwoFriday, 21 August 2015
Heaven, or a lot of pagan gods at least, may know what was in the air 2500 years ago. Bettany Hughes has just finished her trilogy of philosophers from that millennium, and now we have Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill taking us genially around... Read more... |
The Iliad, British Museum /Almeida TheatreSaturday, 15 August 2015
You don’t know Homer’s Iliad until you’ve heard it read aloud, all 24 books – not quite every line, but almost – and 16 hours of it. Yesterday's marathon was surely something like the events in which the Athenians kept the oral tradition... Read more... |
