London
Katherine Waters
It seems they’re having trouble with the lights. Thirty-five past five and they’re not yet on. “Typical,” laughs a woman, surveying the huddle of hi-vis chaperones. Palm fronds wave in the wind, suits leave work. St James’s Square slowly fills with people. The huddle of technicians breaks up and in a short moment, candy coloured bulbs strung in rainbow belts between plane trees light up and everyone goes “Oooooh” and gets out their phone.It’s the second year of Lumiere London, the four-day (or rather four-night) festival of light across the capital put on by maestros of urban show, Artichoke Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The Great Man theory of history is applied by Darkest Hour director Joe Wright to his star Gary Oldman as much as their subject Winston Churchill. Oldman’s performance is the sole, sufficient reason to see a film in which little else finally lingers. Kajuhiro Tsuji’s prosthetics allow his physical transformation into a jowly 65-year-old. Oldman’s vocal rhythm and tone then let the icon breathe. He is hesitant, breathless, uncertain. More than mercurial, his volcanic passion boils over in panicked rushes.“Which self shall I be today?” Anthony McCarten’s script has Churchill say. “My emotions Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Fans of Luther will be familiar with writer Neil Cross’s fondness for hideous violence, shocking plot-twists and macabre humour, as well as characterful London locations, and happily they’re all present and correct in this new sci-fi thriller. Cross’s madly escalating timetable of terror goes like this: take two mismatched detectives, set them off on a murder investigation, then start the clock ticking on the annihilation of the entire planet.The shockathon commenced right from the opening sequence. For an hors d’oeuvre, we saw the spook-ish Grace Morrigan (Nikki Amuka-Bird, another Luther Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It’s not the first time that James Norton has kicked off BBC One’s New Year primetime celebrations in Russian style. Two years ago, he was costumed up as the courageous Prince Andrei, in illustrious ensemble company for Andrew Davies and Tom Harper’s War and Peace. To say that Norton’s central role in McMafia, the new eight-parter created by Hossein Amini and James Watkins (who directs the full series), comes with rather more moral ambiguity would be an understatement.If Tolstoy measured human probity in living right by God (and settling your gambling debts), the denizens of this particular “ Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Even if Matthew Bourne were never to choreograph another step, he could fill theatres in perpetuity by rotating old stock. Cinderella, made in 1997, was the follow-up to his break-out hit Swan Lake but, never quite happy with it, he reworked it in 2010, replacing the musicians in the pit with a custom-made recording of an 82-piece orchestra. It’s this version that now appears, slated to follow its London dates with an exhaustive UK tour. At least now no-one in Milton Keynes or Sheffield can complain that the regions are shortchanged by getting piped music. Everyone is. Elevated to the status Read more ...
Matt Wolf
These are challenging times for new British musicals. Following quickly on from a Pinocchio that ought to be way more joyful than it is, along comes The Grinning Man, a Victor Hugo-inspired musical first seen in autumn 2016 in Bristol. Sharing with its immediate predecessor a thematic interest in the transformative value of pain, Tom Morris's production is a visual delight that needs considerable streamlining and strengthening of tone if it is to amount to more than the musical theatre catch-all that it would seem to be at present.Its literary antecedent (Hugo's 1869 novel L'Homme qui rit) Read more ...
Katherine Waters
The familiar doesn’t have to get old. Last night at the Coliseum there were children in the boxes, adults in the circle and grandparents in the stalls. Seasonal favourite Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker brings all ages to the ballet — as well as each audience member's inner child, and this year's revival by English National Ballet is no exception.The magic begins with Peter Farmer’s designs. Snow falls in gusts as guests arrive to the party by skating across a frozen lake; the interior of the house is festooned with lavish drapery which makes the most of the space’s depth and later warps Read more ...
Helen Wallace
An icy, wet wind snuck under the door of house number 8 in Fournier Street, where Uri Caine, bundled in coat and woolly hat, conjured Schumann’s darkly powerful "Im Rhein". Beside him, perched on a weaver’s stool, was improvising legend Phil Minton, rasping, whistling and groaning his way through "The wilderness of my life". Caine wove ragtime into plunging storm-tossed sequences, along with polkas, waltzes, blues and honky-tonk; as he plumbed the river’s murky depths, Minton scattered gasped husks of memory upon its surface. Caine’s playing felt too big for the handsome front parlour; but it Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Utopias have a way of going up in flames. Rachel Hewitt’s new book, A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind, charts the revolutionary fervour and disappointment provoked over the course of the 1790s by looking at the decade through the biographies of five of its optimistic luminaries — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Thomas Beddoes, and Thomas Wedgwood.Over the course of this decade, the French Revolution broke out to great enthusiasm before souring into the Terror during which killed thousands; war with France was declared; Beddoes and Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe is a true prince of darkness here, picking out Leslie Caron’s beautiful eyes and gleaming mouth despite the gloom of a seedy Notting Hill boarding house. Taking a break from her usual roles as a happy hoofer, Caron plays Jane, a serious young French woman adrift in London with an unplanned pregnancy who finds herself renting an attic bedsit.Adapted from Lynne Reid Banks’s best-selling novel, The L-Shaped Room was very daring in 1962 and the film faced several battles with the censors. Not only does Jane visit a Harley Street abortionist (a creepy Emlyn Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Even by the standards of theatrical archaeology that the Finborough has made its own, The Passing of the Third Floor Back is a curiosity. Jerome K Jerome’s 1908 play was a long-running hit in the West End – with Johnston Forbes-Robertson, one of the leading English classical actors of his day, in the lead – before transferring to Broadway for a year. The author termed it an “idle fancy”, though there’s nothing at all here of the indolent comedy of the work for which he remains far and away best know, Three Men in a Boat.Instead Jerome charts a determined course from comedy of a rather bitter Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Nothing beats a great singer-songwriter live and unadorned. So it was with Tom Russell at London’s 100 Club on the penultimate night of his UK tour. Accompanied by his faithful friend the brilliant Milanese Max Bernadino on guitar, the man whom Lawrence Ferlinghetti describes as “Johnny Cash, Jim Harrison and Charles Bukowski rolled into one” gave a brilliant performance which was a masterclass in audience engagement.Russell’s most recent album Folk Hotel featured prominently, already very familiar to everyone present it seemed, and there was an early dip into his 2015 folk opera The Rose of Read more ...