Reviews
theartsdesk
From the moment Adam Riches bursts onto the stage, spewing his business cards around as a manic showbiz agent who wants to sign up everyone and everything - including even the venue's walls and floor - this is a show of hyper energy and absurdist comedy.The character comic does a quick costume change to become Pedro, a Spanish Swingball champion, and what follows is a version of the game the manufacturers never dreamed of, a waterfight and all sorts of mayhem. There’s a lot of audience participation, but anybody pulled up on stage is enjoying themselves thoroughly; at times there's such Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Anyone for Demis?" wasn’t the only question posed by this trawl through some of the foreign – not American - popular music that’s been hugged to our collective bosom. That the large, hirsute, kaftan-shrouded Greek wonder that’s Demis Roussos was popular is obvious. He landed in the Top 10 in 1975 with “Happy to be on an Island in the Sun” and became a chart regular for the next two years. Everyone was for Demis. The other poser was the self-cancelling, “Now that pop music’s gone global, has the appeal of the foreign pop song gone forever?”Thankfully, this wasn’t the sniggersome jaunt through Read more ...
theartsdesk
Tiffany Stevenson ★★★★The comic is currently appearing on Show Me the Funny on ITV, where her smily disposition is a welcome antidote to some of the sneery critics they have mustered. There’s boyfriend stuff in Cavewoman but Stevenson also delivers a few astute political observations, as well as the occasional unPC gag - such as suggesting Tina Turner's dance moves were inspired by her avoiding Ike’s punches.There are some nice riffs about going to a bingo session with her mother and the weird sisterhood she saw there, her penchant for leopardskin prints (you can take the girl out of...), the Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Landscape painting may be dominated by the Dutch. But in music it is the Austrians who know best how to evoke the majesty of the great outdoors. In the first of last night's two Proms, one of the most awesome of Anton Bruckner's snow-capped symphonies, number five in B flat major, accompanied a new high climb through the Tyrol from fellow Austrian Thomas Larcher for two great musical off-pisters: violinist Viktoria Mullova and cellist Matthew Barley.What was most peculiar about this concert was how the 19th-century Bruckner and contemporary Larcher seemed to have switched shoes. It was Read more ...
fisun.guner
There were rumours – on Twitter, naturally – that Charlie Sheen was going into the House. But, alas, these were unfounded, and he didn’t. Maybe even Sheen has to draw the line somewhere. Instead, only four people I’d heard of actually went ahead and signed this contract with the Devil: Sally “my husband doesn’t control me” Bercow, Kerry “this is my chance to reinvent myself” Katona, Amy Childs (I believe her catchphrase is “I’m really jel”) and Jedward, who not only must be counted as one but must remain unquoted, since they don’t really do sentences.It was clever of Channel 5 to kick their Read more ...
fisun.guner
In his later years, Stanley Spencer cut quite a figure in his native village of Cookham in Berkshire: he would often be seen pushing his rickety pram, with its battered umbrella, paints and canvas, and a hand-painted sign requesting all curious onlookers to desist from disturbing the artist at work. He spent most of his life in the village - even acquiring the nickname “Cookham” at the Slade, since he’d rush back by train after lessons every evening, presumably in time for tea.His beloved “village in heaven” resided in his imagination always, and his religious paintings, for which he is best Read more ...
theartsdesk
A three-piece hailing from Seattle and its environs, The Cave Singers are an authentically hairy proposition. With his tweed hat and red beard, at this Edge festival gig singer Pete Quirk looked like a cross between the late Robin Cook and a stray leprechaun from Finian’s Rainbow, while Derek Fudesco dispensed his lovely, liquid guitar lines from beneath a blur of flying hair.On record their trippy psych-folk-rock is often rather bucolic, like Fleet Foxes with more edge and on weirder drugs. On stage, however, they closed ranks, dispensing with many of the textures of their studio work and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A nine-year-old girl testifies in court. She’s clear, precise and damning. The case revolves around her testimony alone. All the accused – 10 of them, her family and neighbours - are declared guilty and executed. The girl is the only one of the family left alive. Thirty-two years later, the girl faces the same charges. Tried, she’s found guilty but the case goes to appeal. The girl was Jennet Device and the charge was witchcraft. This extraordinary, atmospheric and beautiful documentary told her story, the story of The Pendle Witch Child, the implications of the case and how it resonated. And Read more ...
Ismene Brown
An all-Russian prom with two masterpieces centre stage and a remarkably compelling young violin artist brought in a packed house last night. Esa-Pekka Salonen and Lisa Batiashvili have already recorded Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto, and the bond between them was evident in a delicate yet deeply searching performance of this melancholy, epic work with Salonen's orchestra, the Philharmonia.The concerto retains its human story indelibly: written for David Oistrakh in 1948, it was not permitted a premiere for seven years, as Shostakovich battled with Stalin's sudden volte-face against him Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
We critics often find ourselves "embarrassed by historical facts", as Craig Raine once put it. Raine was trying to explain why so many people still value Wilfred Owen's poetry - to him, the most overrated corpus of the 20th century. "[Owen's] life and death as a soldier make literary criticism seem invalid and pedantic," he argued, before proceeding to a very validly pedantic demolition job. Music has its own Wilfred Owens. Viktor Ullmann is one. His reputation (which was showcased last night in a rare staging of his only opera, The Emperor of Atlantis, at the Arcola Theatre) seems to Read more ...
ash.smyth
It is easy to see why Danish director Susanne Bier’s latest movie would have scooped up all the Foreign Language gongs, made the festival selection lists and generally five-starred it all over the shop. Riffing on the theme of violent conflict as it arises both in an African refugee camp and a generic Danish town (here, picnics in wheat fields, fresh lakes for swimming, unlocked front doors, faces like golden apples; there, Darfur-style dirt-scratching), In a Better World centres on the friendship of two schoolboys, Elias (Markus Rygaard) and Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen), one perennially Read more ...
geoff brown
Roger Wright’s reign as director of the BBC Proms has luckily spared us some of the more desperate themed programming that ran through the seasons in Nicholas Kenyon’s day. "Music and Shakespeare", I remember; music and the sea; and one year of Spain, Spain and Spain. I never wanted to hear another castanet again. But individual concerts still need careful planning. And if you’re hunting for a convenient hook, the name of Serge Koussevitzky – fiery Russian conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 25 years, double-bass player, minor composer, famed promoter of the new – is as plausible a Read more ...