Wales
The Wind of Heaven, Finborough Theatre review - a welcome, if strange, Emlyn Williams rediscoverySaturday, 30 November 2019
This is the third Emlyn Williams piece to be presented here in a decade: The Druid's Rest in 2009 was followed by the enormous success of Accolade, directed by Blanche McIntyre, two years later.If it's a truism that neglected plays may well have... Read more... |
Mrs Peachum's Guide to Love and Marriage, Mid Wales Opera review - scaled down seediness, with a swingFriday, 15 November 2019
The Beggar’s Opera: does any piece of music theatre promise more fun and deliver more tedium? Yes, it was the satirical smash of 1728; yes, it inspired Brecht and Weill; yes, with its combination of popular melodies and a topical script it was... Read more... |
A Prayer for Wings, King's Head Theatre review - claustrophobic mother-daughter drama soarsSaturday, 02 November 2019
When Sean Mathias wrote A Prayer for Wings 35 years ago, the subject of young carers devoting their lives to parents with disabilities had just come as a revelation. That it's still very much a shame under another Tory government keeps this play... Read more... |
On Bear Ridge, Royal Court review - Rhys Ifans's tragicomic masterclassTuesday, 29 October 2019
Memory involves places, people, things and words, especially words. This abstract proposition is given knotty life in Welsh playwright Ed Thomas's extraordinary new play, On Bear Ridge, which comes to the Royal Court after opening at the Sherman... Read more... |
Podger, Brecon Baroque, Hollingworth, Brecon Cathedral review - Bohemian footnotes yield the extraordinarySaturday, 26 October 2019
One of the more harmless pastimes of us retired academics is rummaging around among the so-called minor contemporaries of great and famous composers. It often turns out that quite a few of them aren’t minor at all, or at least not minor enough to... Read more... |
The Accident, Channel 4 review - Sarah Lancashire leads another bleak but gripping dramaFriday, 25 October 2019
I wouldn’t want to live in Jack Thorne’s head. Nor Sarah Lancashire’s, for that matter. The Accident is Thorne’s latest four-part drama, and the final instalment in his grim and gripping trilogy of shows for Channel 4. The Accident’s predecessors... Read more... |
Niall Griffiths: Broken Ghost review - Welsh visions of hope and lossSunday, 18 August 2019
The trend-hopping taste-makers who run British literary publishing have lately decided that “working-class” writing merits a small dole of their precious time and cash. To assess how long this latest patronising fad may last, check out the... Read more... |
Keeping Faith, Episode 4 Series 2, BBC One review - murders aplentyWednesday, 14 August 2019
Life on the Welsh coast isn’t getting any easier: defendant Madlen was found guilty of murder, husband Evan was coming home from prison, and Faith had just given Steve Baldini a rather uncomfortable snog on the beach. She’s probably pining for that... Read more... |
Keeping Faith, Series 2, BBC One review - family misfortunesWednesday, 24 July 2019
It was a year ago that BBC One scored a smash hit with the first series of Keeping Faith, but as series two opens 18 months have passed since Faith Howells’s husband Evan (Bradley Freegard) disappeared and triggered a traumatic chain reaction of... Read more... |
Gwen review - gothic horror set in north WalesThursday, 18 July 2019
This gothic yarn set in 1850s Snowdonia stars Maxine Peake as Elen. She’s left alone with two young daughters to manage an isolated farm when her husband goes off to war. Mysterious omens – a sheep’s heart filled with nails festoons the farm... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Best of British Transport FilmsTuesday, 28 May 2019
The British Transport Commission was created in 1948 by the Atlee government, an ambitious attempt to organise rail, road and water transport under a single unwieldy umbrella (for a time it was the world’s largest employer, with a staff of over 900,... Read more... |
Manic Street Preachers, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - 20th anniversary tour lets underrated songs shineMonday, 27 May 2019
Nothing brings home the difference between sequencing an album and sequencing a live show like going to see a classic album played in its entirety. And Manic Street Preachers’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours – described by frontman James Dean... Read more... |
