London
Gary Naylor
There’s a lot of going back to the future in theatres just now - shows (like this one) postponed by 18 months or so and delayed still further by co-star Roger Bart being indisposed on press night are bringing the bright lights back to the West End. Once you read all the Covid advice sent in advance (is there an way of making it a bit less intimidating, as it’s never quite the expected blizzard of certificates and glowing QR codes on the door), we’re back to, if not quite 26 October 1985, then 26 October 2019 - and doesn’t that feel good!Doc Brown has pimped up his DeLorean with his time- Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Music in London has faced down plagues, puritans, philistines and planners over the four centuries spanned by the Aurora Orchestra’s season-opener at Kings Place on Saturday. This concert in the venue’s “London Unwrapped” strand filled its main hall without distancing for the first time since the capital’s (and the world’s) latest pandemic struck. Accompanied for several works by the counter-tenor Iestyn Davies, on their own in others, a score of the Aurora’s players were led by their founder-conductor Nicholas Collon on a journey from the first Elizabeth’s city to our own, by way of the Read more ...
Gary Naylor
We’re in an agreeable drawing room with an author, Charles Condomine, who is looking forward to having a bit of fun with a local spiritualist, Madame Arcati, whom he has invited over for an evening séance. But once a conversation with his wife, Ruth, debating the relative attractiveness of his deceased first wife, Elvira, cracks like a shot from Chekhov’s gun, trouble is as sure to come as the spirits themselves.Richard Eyre’s revival of Noël Coward’s crowd-pleasing comedy fetches up at the Harold Pinter Theatre having haunted the Theatre Royal Bath and the Duke of York’s Theatre and Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
75 years after Sir Thomas Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, it’s sobering to reflect that without this one person’s hubris and sheer cantankerousness, British musical life would be a whole lot worse off. Beecham, who fortuitously combined musical flair with force of personality and the inheritance of a pharmaceutical fortune, tended to start orchestras of his own after falling out with other ones. His chief creations, the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, today are still going strong – indeed, arguably stronger than ever. The latter notches up three- Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The Wigmore Hall is a bastion of white musicians playing the music of white composers to a largely white audience and it is to the credit of the management that, in seeking to diversify, it staged this lecture-recital on the history of black musicals in Britain from 1900-1950 in a main evening slot. But while it succeeded in bringing a different audience to the hall the event itself was a disappointing mish-mash that failed to satisfy in any respect.The evening launched a book – An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900-1950 – co-written by Sarah Whitfield, a (white) Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
The Coronet Theatre is a beautiful space – it’s a listed Victorian building, and the bar’s like something out of a film about Oscar Wilde. Unfortunately, Robert Holman’s The Lodger, a new play about family and trauma, doesn’t live up to its surroundings. Director Geraldine Alexander, last seen as the Bridgertons’ arch-yet-kindly housekeeper, salvages a clumsy script that smacks more of a debut than the work of an established writer.It’s unclear whether The Lodger wants to be a family drama, or a comedy, or something in between. Esther (Penny Downie) and Dolly (Sylvestra Le Touzel) are sisters Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Switching between upstairs and downstairs makes your soul melt, in this first of three Joseph Losey/Harold Pinter films, a savage class satire filmed in the freezing winter of 1963.Hugo (Dirk Bogarde) is the obsequious, insinuating butler who comes to stay with minor, lounging young aristo Tony (James Fox) at his new Chelsea pad. The pricey house is soggy with rot when Hugo arrives, though louche Tony, declaring himself “cosy” with his bed of newspapers and three-bar fire, sees nothing amiss. Hugo’s dubious, papier-mâché provenance as a gentleman’s gentleman is clear from his first Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This was, said bassist Michael Janisch, his first gig since January last year, and his crack group’s Monday evening set, kicking off at the un-jazzy hour of 6.30pm, was an energising, dynamic group performance from A-list British musicians who are band leaders in their own right. They are Empirical’s alto-saxophonist Nathaniel Facey; his childhood friend – and one of Britain’s finest drummers (and fellow Empirical member) – Shaney Forbes; fellow Whirlwind Recordings artist, tenor saxophonist George Crowley; and on the keyboards and synths, Rick Simpson, whose own quartet was touring its Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
To coin a cliché, the fourth album from London pop-dance success story Rudimental is a game of two halves. The first is off-putting and dull but halfway through, the band seem to wake up. There are 16 songs on the album. The eighth, “Handle My Own”, is the first one to make the ears prick up, and from track 11 on we’re in continuous business.A decade ago, the coming together of an unknown EDM trio, Rudimental, and a super-hot producer looking for a project, Amir Amor (who soon joined them), resulted in the chart-topping “Feel the Love”, featuring John Newman. The group encapsulated a moment Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
People Just Do Nothing is a mockumentary BBC TV series, now ended, about fictional Brentford pirate radio crew Kurupt FM. It’s also a comedy based entirely on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, in that the humour derives from the worldview of all the key characters – tawdry, hopeless garage MC/DJ chancers – being confidently blinkered to the point of absurdity, while all else points to their utter uselessness. The twist is that Kurupt FM’s debut album is often musically sprightly and enjoyable.Since the series ended in 2018, Kurupt FM have made major festival appearances, and a feature film has Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
I was looking forward to this Prom by the Manchester Collective, an exciting young group founded in 2016, which has quickly established a reputation for innovative presentation of contemporary repertoire. And while I found the playing excellent, demonstrating the commitment and intensity of the performers, I had some reservations about the programme, particularly some questions of proportion. It felt a bit out of balance.There was a nice mixture of in-your-face music – the equivalent of getting stared down by an Indian fast bowler – and a more genial second half. String ensembles often try to Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Danny Robins tells us what we’re in for with his title, so we’re warned. And it’s not long before we get the “things that go bump in the night”, the creaking floorboards, the “I know this sounds crazy, but…” because they’re the essential components of the genre. Reviewing a ghost story and complaining about that stuff really isn’t on – like critiquing a pantomime for its audience participation. That’s not to say that any genre piece is easy to write or to stage. Since the structure is so tight, the expectations set and the narrative arc visible from curtain-up to curtain call, chiselling Read more ...