1930s
David Nice
This multimedia horror revue gave me heart trouble, which is an odd kind of compliment. Not at first: the assault of abrasive music, the one singer having to leap all over the place vocally, competing with spoken word and information overload, can seem self-defeating. And that vile word “lobotomy” is enough in itself to trigger a panic attack. But ultimately the impact is powerful, unforgettable, in tune with great artistic statements about the human condition.Least Like the Other’s creative team have been selective about the supposedly limited details we now have concerning the tragic life Read more ...
Robert Beale
Nicola Benedetti and Sir Mark Elder are both in the enviable position of being able to take audiences with them into music territory that might scare some away. So it was a gratifyingly near-capacity house that heard Szymanowski’s Second Violin Concerto last night as – on the first occasion they have worked together – they presented it to the Hallé audience.It’s long been a favourite of gifted solo violinists, because of its combination of folk-style energy and lyricism (and the cadenza movement, which was written by its first soloist Pawel Kochański and divides the work roughly in two, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As the third series of All Creatures… ended a couple of months ago, Britain had just declared itself at war with Germany and the men of Darrowby were queuing resolutely in the town square to join the armed forces. Intriguingly, as the credits rolled, it seemed that among them was one of our headlining vets, Tristan Farnon (Callum Woodhouse).So it proved, and Tristan’s determination to join the war effort, and the despairing efforts to stop him by his older brother Siegfried (Samuel West), provided the running theme of this Yuletide one-off. Screenwriter Ben Vanstone, who must still be Read more ...
Gary Naylor
We’ve had 75 years to get used to Scrooge McDuck, so we can hardly complain if the Americans indulge in a little cultural appropriation and send Charles Dickens’ misanthrope to Depression-era Tennessee for another whirl on the catharsis-redemption ride. And, even if we Brits may feel a bit sniffy about Scrooge’s reinvention, he’s been kidnapped by Dolly Parton, the patron saint of country songs, for a holiday run on the South Bank - so listen y’all, there’ll be no rootin’ tootin’ about that round these parts.Expanded from a 40-minute "park presentation" at Dollywood into a full-fledged Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ben Vanstone, the showrunner for Channel 5’s hit revival of All Creatures Great and Small, originally foresaw it as stretching over four seasons, but has subsequently revised his opinion. With the third series ending and the fourth already in preparation, he now foresees broader horizons. “Everything in this show plays out slower than you think it would,” he commented.Fortuitously, All Creatures… has proved to be the ideal tonic – or maybe that should be “sedative” – for a world where the wheels are apparently coming off. Amid economic turmoil, political madness and a European war which might Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“The bands came in 1933.” So begins C P Taylor’s Good, a play that tries its hardest to resist being Googled. It was first performed by the RSC in 1981; this production, starring David Tennant as a mild-mannered German professor who gradually becomes a paid-up Nazi, has been delayed several times by the pandemic. Director Dominic Cooke has crafted a punchy first act, but he can’t save the second from Taylor’s stodgy script.“The bands” play constantly in the head of Tennant's John Halder, their repertoire ranging from Bavarian oompah to American jazz. Halder is a professor of literature in Read more ...
graham.rickson
Kuhle Wampe is a fascinating curio, a blend of documentary, social realist drama and political debate which so bothered the German authorities upon its release in 1932 that they promptly banned it. The censorship board’s justification condemned the film as one “which shakes the foundations of the state”, most pointedly in its depiction of official indifference to poverty and the search for work.Written by Bertholt Brecht and mostly directed by Slatan Dudow, the film opens with a montage of newspaper headlines charting rising unemployment statistics. There’s little dialogue; the well- Read more ...
Matt Wolf
This is the summer, in musical theatre terms at least, of the revival of the revival, with several recent remountings of iconic titles (South Pacific, now in London previews) getting a renewed lease on life, alongside the likes of My Fair Lady, Crazy for You, and Sister Act on hand in or near London to swell the ranks of the familiar yet further.So it's a delight to report that England's own Kerry Ellis – a onetime Eliza Doolittle as it happens – has taken over from Broadway powerhouse Sutton Foster in Kathleen Marshall's transplanted take on Anything Goes for an encore engagement Read more ...
Robert Beale
It’s an ill heatwave that brings nobody any good, and Buxton International Festival’s decision to move its highlight concert, by Manchester Camerata with Jess Gillam and the Brodsky Quartet as their guests, from the Buxton Octagon to St John’s Church meant not only that it was heard in probably the only coolish venue in town yesterday afternoon, but also that it benefitted from an acoustic that’s excellent for instrumental music.The Camerata is celebrating its 50th anniversary in different places this year, and while the personnel seen yesterday may not overlap entirely with the band we are Read more ...
Robert Beale
Manchester Collective were back on home ground last night in the tour of a programme featuring the first performances of a new song cycle by Edmund Finnis, Out of the Dawn’s Mind. Soprano soloist was the amazing Ruby Hughes.It was home ground for her, too, in a sense: as a former student at Chetham’s School of Music she’s an old friend of the Collective’s leader and artistic director, Rakhi Singh.Ruby Hughes and the Collective created a moving and stimulating online streamed programme from the Lakeside Arts venue at the University of Nottingham in February last year – Dowland, Debussy, Mahler Read more ...
Gary Naylor
The stage is cluttered with objects; a pianola sits stage left; a large cabinet, soon to be revealed as a display case for tiny glass ornaments, dominates the centre. A man, gaunt, in his 40s perhaps, wanders among this stuff.He is our narrator (Paul Hilton) and he tells us that what we will witness is a memory, the truth presented through an illusion. The set suddenly makes sense – because this is how we remember things. Objects loom large or small, music floats in and out and around us, triggering otherwise inaccessible recollections, spaces are porous. Tennessee Williams has made a world Read more ...
Gary Naylor
One of the more irritating memes (it’s a competitive field, I know) is the “Name a more iconic couple” appearing over a photo of Posh and Becks, or Harry and Megan, or Leo and whoever. I’ve always been tempted to close the discussion down with a photo of Bonnie and Clyde, because couples do not come more iconic than they are. So it’s a surprise to discover that Nick Winston’s production is the first ever musical dedicated to them in the West End, reviving a show that was in and out of Broadway ten years ago quicker than the Barrow gang were in and out of a Wells Fargo bank. Since then, Read more ...