teenage
Markie Robson-Scott
Yoram (Menashe Noy), a vet in a Tel Aviv safari park, knows how to treat a sick jaguar (startling to see such a magnificent beast in an oxygen mask) but he has no idea how to comfort his troubled 17-year-old daughter Roni (a powerful Zohar Meidan). Both are mourning the death of Roni’s mother a year ago, but all they can offer each other is a tortured silence.Writer-director Nimrod Eldar’s first feature, which premiered on HBO in February in the USA, is quirky and atmospheric, with extraordinary desert scenes and a bracingly unpretentious, understated feel to Yoram and Roni’s knotted Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Is friendship mightier and more durable than sex? That's the proposition put forward by the engaging if ultimately cautious Banana Split, the Los Angeles-set romcom in which two teenagers become friends unbeknownst to the long-haired himbo boyfriend whom they have shared. Co-written by Hannah Marks, who stars as the wounded (but maybe not) April, this feature film directing debut from cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke is sufficiently lively that one feels the timidity of its closing sequence that much more fully.Up until then, there's a lot that both surprises and satisfies about a movie that Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Netflix’s sweet but slightly strange drama Sex Education is already two series into its tale of teenage awkwardness in the face of growing up, with a third planned for when the Covid-19 plague is over. Yet it is only now that the soundtrack is being unleashed on the record-buying public.That said, it doesn’t actually include such classics as Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” or Generation X’s “Dancing with Myself”, which have both featured among a rich treasure of tunes that must have been new to the show’s target audience. Similarly, the album is distinctly short of modern youth-orientated sounds, Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The way that theatres and other arts institutions have leapt into action over the past week, providing a wealth of material online and new ways to connect with audiences, has been truly inspirational. Yesterday, the Hampstead Theatre re-released on Instagram a recording of its production of American playwright Lauren Gunderson’s I and You, specially filmed for IGTV and initially broadcast in 2018. It’s free until 22.00 on Sunday 29 March – and is well worth a watch.All stories have been recontextualised by the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent shutdown (have actors in TV dramas always Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Welcome to New Mushroomton: a fantasy land that’s forgotten itself. This is how we’re introduced to Pixar’s Onward, which is set in a Dungeons & Dragons daydream of suburbia. Director Dan Scanlon’s film is a tribute to his late father, but it begins with a separate elegy. “Long ago,” we’re told, “the world was full of wonder.” Until the day that convenience killed magic — electricity was invented, spells cast aside. Today’s mythical creatures have become ordinary: trolls run tollbooths, gnomes are garden-variety.Such is life for Onward’s heroes, the elven Lightfoot family. There’s meek Read more ...
Matt Wolf
This latest musical theatre exercise in “geek chic” has been an American phenomenon: a show propelled by social media that developed a rabid fan base taking it all the way to Broadway last year. And here Be More Chill now is in London at The Other Palace, previously home to Heathers – another American musical about the psychological torture inherent in being a teen – and arriving in time to suggest Dear Evan Hansen on amphetamines, but with much familiar pushing of buttons where an honest appeal to the heart might be.Not that the adoring public for this lunatic sci-fi paean to normalcy will Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Netflix’s Sex Education has returned to our screens and streams. The show made waves last year for its refreshing take on the teen comedy-drama. It took on abortion, consent and female pleasure — subjects strikingly absent from our actual high school educations. The result was a show that was always bingeable, sometimes educative, and oozing with sex-positive delights. Not everyone liked it. But those of us who did — teenagers all over again — could not stop talking about it. These are high expectations for a show going into its sophomore season. But thank God and thank Laurie Nunn: this is a Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen is an institution in the States, running on Broadway since 2016 and currently on its second year of a national tour. It also made a star of original leading man Ben Platt, now appearing in Netflix’s The Politician – and this long-awaited West End production could well do the same for the exceedingly talented 21-year-old Sam Tutty.Tutty plays the titular Evan, a 17-year-old high school senior suffering from debilitating social anxiety. His well-meaning, divorcée mother, Heidi (Rebecca Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Time has been not just kind but even crucial to Little Baby Jesus, the 2011 play from the multi-hyphenate talent Arinzé Kene, who since then has gone on become a major name on and offstage: the West End transfer of his self-penned Misty brought him dual Olivier nominations earlier this year as writer and actor, and he segued from that to playing the volatile son Biff in Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic.All of which means that catching this play at this point in Kene’s career is to witness an embryonic creative chomping rabidly and electrically at the bit Read more ...
David Nice
There's something about the very opening of a Mahler symphony which gives you an idea of how the rest of the performance will go. In the case of the Second, the inescapable "Resurrection", it's the ferocity behind the upper string tremolo and the wildness of the uprush from cellos and basses. To kick off the first full Tsinandali Festival in the wonderful part-open auditorium recently constructed on a country estate in Georgia's wine-growing district, there was that special shock of the new you only get from young players experiencing the work for the first time.The Armenians, Azeris, Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It’s now Edinburgh Fringe transfer season in London, but here’s one they made earlier: Cora Bissett’s Fringe First-winning autobiographical play from the 2018 Festival about her time in 1990s indie band Darlingheart. Though the broad shape of this tale is familiar, Bissett’s gig-theatre approach lends it a raw authenticity and engaging confessional quality.Bissett (pictured below) was still at school when she replied to an advert in the local Fife paper and became the lead singer of Darlingheart. She was driven less by musical ambition – though Patti Smith was already a favourite – more Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The perfect primer to The Regrettes comes towards the end of the colourful video for “I Dare You”, the bubblegum update to “Last Nite” by The Strokes that is the lead single from their second album. Teenage frontwoman Lydia Night delivers the title lyric for the first time in the song with a cheeky wink to the camera, but it’s so subtle - and her face is but one of four, off-centre on screen - that you’ll convince yourself you dreamt it. Besides, you’re but two beats away from the drums coming in again, kicking off another fizzy chorus about the all-consuming madness of first love.Now you, an Read more ...