London
theartsdesk
Comedy writer John Sullivan has died aged 64, writes Adam Sweeting, after spending six weeks in intensive care battling viral pneumonia. The creator of several hit comedy series for the BBC, Sullivan is guaranteed immortality for his masterpiece, Only Fools and Horses, which ran from 1981 to 2002. Featuring the escapades of the wide-boy south-London brothers, Rodney and Del Boy Trotter (Nicholas Lyndhurst and David Jason), it became one of the best-loved British comedies ever screened, and also gained a substantial international following. A 2004 poll named Only Fools... as the best Read more ...
alice.vincent
In a play about drugs for a secondary-school audience there is always the potential for cringing. My own experience of theatre for a young audience involved PSHE lessons, overtly moral drama from hammy actors and dated street names for drugs. It was The Magic Roundabout, only more awkward and less entertaining. The Almeida Theatre and its solid Young Friends scheme is working hard to give youth theatre a better image through Crawling in the Dark, a new play which deals with young people and, yes, drugs, but without an embarrassing reference in sight.Natalie Mitchell has managed the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
According to her website, Martina Cole is "the person who tells it like it really is". If it's really like this dramatisation of her 1997 novel The Runaway, it's unrelentingly brutal, squalid and frightening, a televisual blow to the head from a blunt instrument. Perhaps the fact that the series was shot on a giant set in South Africa helps to account for its strange atmosphere of reality assembled from an Ikea-style flatpack.The Runaway of the title is, or is going to be in episode two, Cathy Connor (Joanna Vanderham). It's the early Sixties, and Cathy has been brought up in London's East Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Having amasssed bankable screenwriting kudos for Edge of Darkness and The Departed, William Monahan made his writer/director debut with London Boulevard, a reworking of Ken Bruen's novel burnished with useful marquee glitz from headliners Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley. However, some reviewers remained unconvinced by the flick's aura of "Guy Ritchie does Get Carter", and Monahan would have done himself a favour by dialling down the guns and geezerdom. Much as we love Ray Winstone, it was a little too predictable that he should turn up as the merciless über-villain, Gant.Nonetheless, the Read more ...
peter.quinn
It's not every night that an artist proposes locking the doors and having “one giant orgy of love”, but then Dee Dee Bridgewater has always had a singular take on things. This sold-out gig at Ronnie Scott's was one of those rare, did-that-really-happen-or-am-I-dreaming evenings where performer and audience reciprocally move into some kind of magical, harmonious alignment.The singer was performing material from Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee Bridgewater, chosen as one of my Albums of the Year in theartsdesk's 2010 New Music Round-up and a worthy Grammy winner Read more ...
Graham Fuller
As he did with his Spanish idyll Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen supplies his fourth London film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, with an anonymous male American narrator whose air of irritatingly breezy omniscience distances us from the proceedings, limiting the empathy we may feel for the four protagonists. This is a shame, because two of them - tetchy, unhappily married Sally (Naomi Watts) and her divorced, needy mother Helena (Gemma Jones) - are, for all their faults, characters we hope to see prosper.As he did with his Spanish idyll Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Dave is a bomb, waiting to go off. He’s dangerous because he seems so ordinary. Late-twenties, he’s nothing much to look at. He wears a suit. Works as a civil servant in some absurdly obscure government department. No girlfriend. If truth be told, a bit of a piss-head really. But the thing that makes him dangerous is that - as the title of DC Moore’s 2010 play makes clear - he fancies himself as a truth-teller. He’s painfully honest, and, worse, he uses honesty as a weapon. So when you meet him in a pub, watch out.But first you have to find the pub (it's a site-specific show, after all). The Read more ...
howard.male
Why on earth did I volunteer to review this? I suppose it was because it would show me a world I had little knowledge of and therefore would be able to offer a fresh, objective perspective on. But 15 minutes in and I’m feeling like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange being subjected to images of sex and violence, his eyes clamped open and his head held fast so there’s no escape. Except of course that would be loads more fun than this new reality TV show set in a London modelling agency, which unfortunately is more like watching nail varnish dry.And the Clockwork Orange comparison isn’t as Read more ...
josh.spero
Some of London's most public, but probably least noticed, art is under threat: part of Eduardo Paolozzi's technicolour mosaics throughout Tottenham Court Road Tube station may have to be removed because of the station's massive Crossrail-led expansion.As the Evening Standard notes, "The work will involve the loss of some tiles that make up arguably the most stunning artwork on the Underground - the coloured mosaics by the late Scottish artist Sir Eduardo Paolozzi." There are bright saxophones and birds and coloured lines running amok, Pop Art dynamism in London's dynamic transportation Read more ...
fisun.guner
London’s literary world must be as small as it was in the 18th century. Or at least that’s the impression you get when you watch book programmes on the BBC, for it’s the same old characters that keep cropping up. Martin Amis, Will Self, Jenny Uglow – like minor players in a picaresque novel in which the novel itself is the hero devouring new experiences, you’re sure to encounter at least two of their like in quick rotation, ubiquitous with their insights and wisdom. And so it was with BBC Two’s Faulks on Fiction and BBC Four’s Birth of the British Novel. The first aired on Saturday Read more ...
peter.quinn
As star pianist Gwilym Simcock amusingly recalled during his solo set last night, German efficiency almost scuppered the making of his latest and universally acclaimed release, Good Days at Schloss Elmau. Recorded at the deluxe Alpine spa in just a single day last September, the pianist's Herculean keyboard feats were made against a subliminal backing track of meadows being mown and kitchen deliveries being made. The results, tractors and bratwurst notwithstanding, suggest that the crisp mountain air clearly agreed with him.Launching the album in the slightly less tony environs of Camden Read more ...
fisun.guner
The title may suggest it’s a difficult conceptual work, but Powerless Structures, Fig 101, by Nordic duo Elmgreen & Dragset, had appeared to win the popular vote for the Fourth Plinth from the outset. And rather than being difficult, it is, in fact, an immediately appealing and cheekily uplifting image of a boy riding his rocking horse. It was unveiled by Mayor Boris Johnson earlier today as one of two winners of the Fourth Plinth commission for 2012 and 2013. The second winner is German artist Katharina Fritsch’s Hahn / Cock (pictured below), which will see a giant cock in Read more ...