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Boyd Tonkin
Monday, 07 June 2021
Loudly and painfully, the consumptive Violetta wheezes before we hear a single note. Her pitiful gasping for the breath that deserts her precedes the prelude to Opera Holland Park...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 07 June 2021
Jimmy McGovern’s new three-part drama about prison life is about as far as you could travel from Ronnie Barker’s Seventies sitcom Porridge, even if they are both on the same TV...
David Nice
Monday, 07 June 2021
Peasant harvesters enter from the facsimile of Lady Ottoline Morrell’s Garsington garden to the right (stage left) of the state-of-the-art pavilion and, splendidly led by a solo...
Liz Thomson
Monday, 07 June 2021
Almost alone among my friends, I liked and admired Ed Miliband, renewing my on-off relationship with the Labour Party having watched his first speech to conference live on TV. I...
Tanika Gupta
Monday, 07 June 2021
On the first day of rehearsals for Out West at the Lyric Hammersmith in May, myself and fellow playwrights Roy Williams and Simon Stephens stood, masked up and lateral flow tested...
Nick Hasted
Monday, 07 June 2021
James, and Tim Booth in particular, have always been too genuinely, gauchely odd to be hip - outsiders at the Madchester rave yet responsible for one of its biggest anthems, “Sit...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 06 June 2021
Early last month, Donovan issued his extraordinary new single “I am the Shaman”. Recorded at David Lynch’s Los Angeles...
Daniel Baksi
Sunday, 06 June 2021
There is an irony to the fact that the most celebrated of auteurs to emerge during Hong Kong’s "Second Wave" of directors in...
Rachel Halliburton
Saturday, 05 June 2021
This blistering, fearless play about an 18-year-old black entrepreneur on the King’s Road raises a myriad of uncomfortable...
David Nice
Saturday, 05 June 2021
One of the many things we’ll miss when Esa-Pekka Salonen moves on from his 13 years as the Philharmonia’s principal...
Florence Hallett
Saturday, 05 June 2021
Undoubtedly the strangest thing in this exhibition dedicated to Rodin’s works in plaster is a rendition of Balzac’s dressing...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 05 June 2021
André Previn: The Warner Edition – Complete HMV & Teldec Recordings (Warner Classics)Flicking through this box set...
Peter Quinn
Saturday, 05 June 2021
This second full-length album from South Korean quintet TXT scrambles musical genres in rich and fascinating ways. From the...
Veronica Lee
Friday, 04 June 2021
For 75 captivating minutes, Ralph Fiennes digs deep into TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, the poet’s interlinked reflections on...
Miranda Heggie
Friday, 04 June 2021
In the final concert marking the Wigmore Hall’s 120-year anniversary, soprano Gweneth Ann Rand and pianist Simon Lepper gave...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 04 June 2021
"Get out!" The order, spoken some way into the third and final episode of Channel 5's entry into the Tudor drama sweepstakes...
Stephen Walsh
Friday, 04 June 2021
Whatever might be said about Longborough Festival’s first live opera since 2019, the first and most important thing is to...
Jon Turney
Friday, 04 June 2021
An army on the move must be as disturbing as it is, on occasion, inspiring. In E.L. Doctorow’s startlingly good civil war...
Graham Fuller
Friday, 04 June 2021
Fourteen months after the Manhattan premiere of John Krasinski's A Quiet Place Part II – and three years after his...
disc of the day
Album: James - All the Colours of You
Covid and other contemporary ills haunt the Manchester perennials
tv
Time, BBC One review - grim and gritty study of life behind bars by Jimmy McGovern
Sean Bean and Stephen Graham find themselves in different kinds of prison
Anne Boleyn, Channel 5 review - whispery and weepy
An imposing star presence undone by a prosaic script
Mare of Easttown, Season Finale, Sky Atlantic review - great performances in a town called malice
Brad Ingelsby's brilliant but bleak drama storms to a close
film
A Quiet Place Part II review - noise abatement sequel
Family vs alien monsters franchise sustains suspense
new music
Album: James - All the Colours of You
Covid and other contemporary ills haunt the Manchester perennials
Album: Tomorrow X Together - The Chaos Chapter: Freeze
An impressively varied second album from the K-pop five-piece
classical
Bronfman, Philharmonia, Salonen, RFH review – celebration around C major
The brilliant first of a great principal conductor’s two farewell programmes
Classical CDs: Three great conductors remembered, Mahler with accordion and a song cycle with no singer
Big box sets, a symphonic swansong in miniature and contemporary music for piano trio
Gweneth Ann Rand, Simon Lepper, Wigmore Hall review - a richly hued collection of songs
An exploration of black voices through music
opera
La traviata, Opera Holland Park review – a revival in rude health
Rodula Gaitanou's production roars back with splendid singing and emotional conviction
Eugene Onegin, Garsington Opera review - choral and orchestral opulence for Tchaikovsky
How much we've missed in a year is exemplified in aspects of this hit-and-miss show
Die Walküre, Longborough Festival Opera review - heroic defiance of farcical constraints
Wagner cut down to size refuses to shrink
theatre
First Person: playwright Tanika Gupta on being back in the rehearsal room once more
The writer expresses her joy at going 'Out West'
The Death of a Black Man, Hampstead Theatre review - blistering theatre with an unflinching vision
Uncomfortable truths beneath the poisoned patter in revival of Alfred Fagon's 1975 play
Four Quartets, Theatre Royal Bath review - Ralph Fiennes gives a compelling performance
Premiere of solo stage production of TS Eliot's work
dance
Bergen International Festival, 26 May - 9 June preview - Norway meets America
Around 30 digital events to watch from anywhere around the world
The Royal Ballet: 21st-Century Choreographers review - dancers rise to fresh challenges
As Covent Garden opens up, the ballet company sets its face in a new direction
Reunion: An Evening with English National Ballet review - back on stage and fabulous
ENB releases all that pent-up energy in its first live showing in 17 months
comedy
Josie Long, Brighton Festival 2021 review - giddy post-lockdown spin on pregnancy-based show
Delayed for a year, Long's 2019 Edinburgh Fringe success finally makes it to Brighton
Books
Ed Miliband: Go Big - How to Fix Our World review - reasons to hope
Ed Miliband shows us where Britain has gone wrong and how we could put it right
Nichola Raihani: The Social Instinct review - the habits of co-operation
A book that goes the way of most evolutionary psychology texts
Kylie Whitehead: Absorbed review - boundary-blurry, darkly funny debut
Body horror portrait delves deep into questions of anxiety and identity
visual arts
The Making of Rodin, Tate Modern review - surrealist tendencies
The sculptor is recast as a proto-modernist in a show focused on works in plaster
Matthew Barney: Redoubt, Hayward Gallery review - the wild west revisited
A fusion of classical and modern mythology
David Hockney / Michael Armitage, Royal Academy review - painting with an iPad vs brushes and paint
Scenes from France and Kenya - an old dog learns new digital tricks, glorious paintings on bark
latest comments
It's so good to hear from a player - thank you...
Thank you for this brilliant and spot-on review....
I didn’t understand the ending either. Lol.
I thought "Ferry" was absolutely great. I total...
Have I been watching the same series as you? The...
“Cuts a singular figure”. Indeed, indeed. I...
Up to episode 9 - very enjoyable but disturbing...
Very average. 1.5 out of 5