London
The Sixteen, Christophers, Cadogan Hall review - polished and impeccable but slightly sedateThursday, 16 December 2021
The Sixteen are one of the jewels of the choral world. For over 40 years they have led the way in singing excellence and programming that brings together old and new. This Christmas concert combined some traditional favourites with Renaissance and... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Bleak MomentsSunday, 12 December 2021
That Bleak Moments exists at all is largely due to Albert Finney; the BFI funded Mike Leigh’s 1971 debut to the tune of £100, as an "experimental film", and Finney’s production company supplied the rest of the £18,000 budget. Shot on location in... Read more... |
Blu-ray: NakedSaturday, 11 December 2021
Naked (1993), the fifth and finest feature film written and directed by Mike Leigh, remains a searing, eerily prescient look at Britain on the verge of a social and economic breakdown.Maybe even a verbal breakdown, too, for Leigh, unlike any... Read more... |
You Don't Know Me, BBC One review - true love meets inner-city crime waveTuesday, 07 December 2021
I sympathised with the prosecuting barrister when she put it to the court that the accused, a man called Hero (Samuel Adewunmi), was “using his closing speech to construct a work of fiction”.This was a crafty meta-joke. You Don’t Know Me itself is a... Read more... |
Measure for Measure, Sam Wanamaker Theatre review - this problem play is a delightMonday, 06 December 2021
Measure for Measure may be the quintessential Shakespeare “problem” play, but just what has earned it that epithet remains a puzzle. Each generation approaches the matter from its own perspective. The developments of recent years, #MeToo most of all... Read more... |
The Good Life, Richmond Theatre review - popular sitcom gets its own origin storyMonday, 29 November 2021
"Off-grid" wasn't a thing in the mid-'70s. Sure, people planted a few potatoes in the garden and pottered about a bit in an allotment, but nobody went the whole hog. The rat race was certainly a thing though, a fertile seam for comedies like The... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, The Old Vic review - not quite a festive-season crackerFriday, 26 November 2021
Four years and a Broadway run on from its Old Vic debut, director Matthew Warchus and writer,Jack Thorne are still throwing everything they can at one of the most familiar stories, and characters, in English literature. That may be to address the... Read more... |
Death of England: Face to Face, National Theatre at Home review - anti-racist trilogy ends with a bangTuesday, 23 November 2021
One of the absolute highpoints of new writing in the past couple of years has been the Death of England trilogy. Written by Roy Williams and Clint Dyer, these three brilliant monologues have not only explored vital questions of race and racism,... Read more... |
The Wife of Willesden, Kiln Theatre review - a saucy ode to BrentFriday, 19 November 2021
Zadie Smith might not be the only writer who can rhyme "tandem" with "galdem", but she’s the only one who can do it in an adaptation of Chaucer. In The Wife of Willesden, her debut play, a modern version of one of the Canterbury Tales, Smith’s... Read more... |
Cécile McLorin Salvant, EFG London Jazz Festival review - strength, vulnerability and humourThursday, 18 November 2021
A fascinating song list that juxtaposed originals with musical theatre, pop songs, Brazilian music and more. An inventive, listening band – take a bow Glenn Zaleski (piano), Alexa Tarantino (flute), Marvin Sewell (guitar), Yasushi Nakamura (bass)... Read more... |
Claire Tomalin: The Young H.G. Wells review – days of the cometWednesday, 17 November 2021
In late 1894 an unknown 28-year-old science tutor and wannabe writer finished a story in his dismal lodgings just north of Euston station. Divorced, after a brief, calamitous marriage to a cousin, he lived with a new lover even though the hostile... Read more... |
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Charing Cross Theatre review - Tony-winning play checks out ChekhovWednesday, 17 November 2021
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike has taken eight years to reach the London stage, which is surprisingly long for the Tony Award winner for Best Play of 2013: the pandemic, unsurprisingly, didn't help. But in a burst of somewhat un-Chekhovian... Read more... |
