America
Matt Wolf
Will pride of place amongst theatre productions every year go in perpetuity to the work of Stephen Sondheim? One might be tempted to think so given the preeminence during 2017 of Dominic Cooke's breathtaking revival of Follies (due back in the National Theatre repertoire from February) and the equal strength of this year's musical theatre reclamation of choice, Company, the Sondheim title that immediately preceded Follies on Broadway. The chance before long to see these two stagings back-to-back is enough to make any theatre lover's heart skip a beat even as a glance back at 2018 finds Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The movie musical: money making or true art – or both? This was a programme to sing along to, in the company of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard. In this second instalment of Neil Brand’s brilliant three-part history, he looked at the genre from the 1940s to the 1960s, from the USA to the UK, as well as voyaging to India and China and dropping in a salut to France.These two decades are labelled the “Second Golden Age”. We bounced straight in with images of New York accompanied by Leonard Bernstein’s euphoric post-war “New York New York”, emblematic of the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A tremendous year for American theatre on the London stage is resoundingly capped by Sweat, the Lynn Nottage Pulitzer prize-winner that folds the personal and the political into a collective requiem for a riven country. But the wounding if sometimes overexplicit writing wouldn't amount to what is yet another feather in the Donmar's 2018 cap without an astonishing directing debut at that address of Lynette Linton, who is shortly to take the reins at the Bush. Between Lynton, designer Frankie Bradshaw, and the ensemble cast of one's dreams, Nottage's portrait of a land in divisive freefall Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When Bruce Springsteen’s one-man show opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on New York’s West 48th Street in October last year it was only supposed to run for six weeks. This being Springsteen, however, demand proved almost limitless, so the season was extended twice, and the Boss (as he doesn't like being called) takes his last bow on 15 December.So you never got a ticket? No worries. There’s an audio version of the show in various formats, and now Netflix is launching a full-scale film of the event, directed by Thom Zimny, which puts you right at the front of the stalls and lets you see Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The story of Lizzie Borden, controversially acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892, has been explored many times on screen and in print (there’s even an opera and a musical version, not to mention the Los Angeles metal band Lizzy Borden). However, this new take on the story starring Chlöe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart from director Craig William Macneill and screenwriter Bryce Kass focuses forensically on the why rather than the who, and transforms the story into a fraught and penetrating psychological thriller.Fittingly for our Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
When the biggest laugh in Bernstein’s Candide goes to a narrator’s mention of how nationalism was sweeping through Europe, you may have a problem. Still, the Bernstein Centenary has been among the best of all possible anniversary celebrations this year and at the LSO Candide - the great man’s bonkers operetta-ish take on Voltaire, a flawed masterpiece with a succession of glorious tunes and snappy lyrics - could have been its apex. At times, it was.If it wasn’t wholly up there, that is in large part due to the conundrum the piece poses about how to bring it convincingly to the stage (or here Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Despite having enjoyed a prolific few years in which he has appeared in (among others) All Is Lost, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Truth and Our Souls at Night, Robert Redford has said that The Old Man & the Gun will be his last film role. That might have turned out to be a disastrous hostage to fortune, so it’s delightful to report that this is as fine and affectionate a send-off as any movie icon could wish.Written and directed by David Lowery and based on a New Yorker article by David Grann, it’s the real-life story of career bank-robber and inveterate jailbreaker Forrest Tucker Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Don't be deceived by Kit Harington's matted, slicked-back hair that is immediately visible the minute the audience enters the boisterous West End revival of True West. By the time the director Matthew Dunster's production has roared to a close two hours later, pretty much nothing is still intact, its leading man's locks included. That's as it should be with Sam Shepard's now-iconic 1980 play that I actually saw somewhat by chance during its world premiere engagement in San Francisco in 1980 and have returned to many times since. Now marking its commercial London debut (previous local Read more ...
Owen Richards
(Warning: spoilers ahead) For a brief 15 minutes, this was the biggest story in America: three boys, identical in looks, discovering each other at the age of 19. Edward “Eddie” Galland, David Kellman and Robert “Bobby” Shafran were all adopted from the same agency, but had no idea they were triplets. They were on the front cover of every magazine, guests on every talk show, and even had a cameo in Desperately Seeking Susan. They talk the same, dress the same, smoke the same – it’s amazing!Then, as quickly as it came, the attention disappeared, but this was only the beginning of their story. Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The director of this deeply charming debut feature is the Korean-American film critic who writes under the pseudonym Kogonada; one of his principle interests over the years has been the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, and there’s something of the same considered emotional restraint of feeling in Columbus, which takes its title from the Indiana location where its slight action is set.The small Midwestern town turns out to boast – or rather not, since it seems to remain rather little known – a remarkable selection of contemporary architecture, buildings commissioned over the years by Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The toughest subject you can imagine: when, and how, would you choose death over life? This riveting film examined that excruciating dilemma within the legal frameworks on offer to some of the terminally ill in the United States. Louis Theroux, narrator and interviewer, met people who wished to take control of their end, and encountered all the moral complexities of the issue along the way. It was an absolutely absorbing, and often very moving experience.Seven states in the US have legalised self-administered lethal medication (with professional safeguards), and such a law is being considered Read more ...
Liz Thomson
What to make of The Simon & Garfunkel Story, which began a week-long residency at London’s Vaudeville Theatre last night and which tours in the new year? A success “from Sydney to Seattle” apparently, with Elaine Paige having called it “amazing” and various regional newspapers offering superlatives. The programme proclaims it (with idiosyncratic use of upper case), "The World's biggest and most successful Simon & Garfunkel Theatre Show". Is there competition?The singing is pretty classy, Sam O’Hanlon as Simon and Charles Blyth as Garfunkel producing evocative close harmony, though Read more ...