politics
Alan Hollinghurst: Our Evenings review - a gift that keeps on givingMonday, 04 November 2024In Alan Hollinghurst’s first novel, The Swimming Pool Library (1988), set during the summer of 1983, the young gay narrator, William Beckwith, lives in Holland Park. That same year and location furnish the setting of the first part of Hollinghurst’s... Read more... |
The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2, Park Theatre review - if Chekhov did soap operasSaturday, 26 October 2024The misadventures and misbehaviours of the English upper-middle class is catnip for TV executives. All those posh types on which us hoi polloi can sit in delicious self-righteous judgement, as we marvel at their cut glass accents, well-tailored... Read more... |
The Apprentice review - from chump to TrumpFriday, 18 October 2024It’s common to say that Shakespeare would have liked such-and-such a modern story, but I think he actually might have gone for this one. The Bard’s eye was drawn to cruelty at every turn, and bad-to-the-bone cruelty seeps from each scene of The... Read more... |
Land of the Free, Southwark Playhouse review - John Wilkes Booth portrayed in play that resonates across 160 yearsFriday, 18 October 2024Straddling the USA Presidential elections, Simple8’s run of Land of the Free could not be better timed, teaching us an old lesson that wants continual learning – the more things change, the more they stay the same.We open on the Booth family kids... Read more... |
Knife on the Table, Cockpit Theatre review - gangsters grim, not glamorousThursday, 17 October 2024There’s a moment in writer/co-director, Jonathan Brown’s, gritty new play, Knife on the Table, that justifies its run almost on its own. Flint, a decent kid going astray, is "invited" to prove he’s ready for the next step in his drug-dealing career... Read more... |
Here in America, Orange Tree Theatre review - Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller lock horns in McCarthyite AmericaWednesday, 25 September 2024The clue is in the title – not Then in America or Over There in America or even a more apposite, if more misleading, Now in America, but an urgent, pin you to the wall and stick a finger in your face, Here in America.Pre-Trump 2.0, David Edgar’s new... Read more... |
Album: LL COOL J - THE FORCESaturday, 07 September 2024This album only has one serious flaw: LL COOL J didn’t open it with “OK you can call it a comeback”. Sorry, cheap joke (if you didn’t know, his classic hit “Mama Said Knock You Out” starts with the lyric “Don’t call it a comeback!” and this, his... Read more... |
The Fabulist, Charing Cross Theatre review - fine singing cannot rescue an incoherent productionWednesday, 21 August 2024On opening night, there’s always a little tension in the air. Tech rehearsals and previews can only go so far – this is the moment when an audience, some wielding pens like scalpels, sit in judgement. Having attended thousands on the critics’ side... Read more... |
The Birthday Party, Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath review - Pinter still packs a punchSaturday, 17 August 2024Before a word is spoken, a pause held, we hear the seagulls squawking outside, see the (let’s say brown) walls that remind you of the H-Block protests of the 1980s, witness the pitifully small portions for breakfast. If you were in any doubt that we... Read more... |
Fiddler on the Roof, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - dazzling gem of a production marks its diamond anniversaryThursday, 08 August 2024If I were a rich man, I'd be inclined to put together a touring production of Fiddler on the Roof and send it around the world, a week here, a week there, to educate and entertain. But, like Tevye, I also have to sell a little milk to put... Read more... |
Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, Sky Documentaries review - the New Jersey rocker with many strings to his bowMonday, 05 August 2024The music scene on the New Jersey shore in the late Sixties and early Seventies must have been a thing of wonder, a kind of Merseymania-on-Sea. Its mix of soul, R&B and primitive rock’n’roll fuelled countless groups, not least Southside Johnny... Read more... |
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent, Whitechapel Gallery review - photomontages sizzling with rageTuesday, 30 July 2024Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent at the Whitechapel Gallery includes many of the artists’s most iconic political photomontages. Beginning in the 1970s, Kennard created images that by speaking truth to power, gave protest movements like CND (... Read more... |
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