old age
Endgame/Rough for Theatre II, Old Vic review - Beckett played for laughsWednesday, 05 February 2020
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” Director Richard Jones has certainly taken Beckett’s words to heart in this vividly comic, star-cast Old Vic double bill, pairing Endgame with a lesser-known short play – which acts as a sort of stylistic and... Read more... |
Blue, Chapter Arts Centre review - heartbreak in the family homeFriday, 08 February 2019
What's worse than grieving? That all-consuming loss. For those that have experienced it, nothing really comes close. It starts to bug Thomas (Jordan Bernarde, main picture second right) during his visit to the Williams household. Recently bereaved... Read more... |
Magda Szabó: Katalin Street review - love after lifeSunday, 13 January 2019
This is a love story and a ghost story. The year is 1934 and the Held family have moved from the countryside to an elegant house on Katalin Street in Budapest. Their new neighbours are the Major (with whom Mr Held fought in the Great War) and his... Read more... |
The Height of the Storm, Wyndham's Theatre review - Eileen Atkins raises the elliptical to artThursday, 11 October 2018
If you're going to write a play that traffics in bafflement, it's not a bad idea to have on hand one of the most beady-eyed actresses around. That would be Dame Eileen Atkins, whose keen-eyed intelligence cuts a swathe through the deliberate... Read more... |
Lavinia Greenlaw: In the City of Love’s Sleep review - curated livesSunday, 23 September 2018
Iris is a museum conservator with a pair of pre-adolescent daughters and a failing marriage. Raif is a widower and an academic who, since writing a book on curiosity cabinets a decade ago, has quietly sunk into a kind of irrelevance. Both have... Read more... |
Olga Tokarczuk: Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead review - on vengeful natureSunday, 09 September 2018
In a small town on the Polish-Czech border where the mobile signal wanders between countries’ operators and only three inhabitants stick it out through the winter, animals are wreaking a terrible revenge. The bodies of murdered men, united in their... Read more... |
Edie review - Sheila Hancock gets summit feverWednesday, 23 May 2018
There have been plenty of films about mountains, and they are mainly about men. The plot tends not to vary: man clambers up peak because, as Mallory famously reasoned, it is there. Whether factual or scripted, often they are disaster movies too:... Read more... |
Lisa Halliday: Asymmetry review - unconventional and brilliantSunday, 04 March 2018
Lisa Halliday’s striking debut novel consists of three parts. The first follows the blooming relationship between Alice and Ezra (respectively an Assistant Editor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer) in New York; the middle section comprises a... Read more... |
Harold and Maude, Charing Cross Theatre review - Sheila Hancock serene in thin productionWednesday, 28 February 2018
The practice of mining the rich seam of popular movies to turn them into stage plays or musicals seemingly never grows tired in theatreland. And sometimes it produces a gem but all too often it’s just a cynical ploy to attract ticket sales by piggy-... Read more... |
ChronicThursday, 18 February 2016
This is a film which, if you want to see it in a cinema, needs to be caught fast. It’s unlikely to please big crowds. Chronic won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2015 and its elliptical narrative will certainly stay with you, but it’s not a joyous... Read more... |
The Lady in the VanFriday, 13 November 2015
Maggie Smith is in her element as Miss S in the film version of Alan Bennett's 1999 play The Lady in the Van, her partnership with the playwright-actor one of the defining components of the storied career of the octogenarian dame, whose renown has... Read more... |
Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album, Courtauld GallerySaturday, 28 February 2015
The sight of two old women fighting in the street would probably meet with roughly the same response from passers-by whether it happened today or 200 years ago – a queasy mixture of dismay, embarrassment and amusement. To get close to Goya’s drawing... Read more... |
