Reviews
Simon Thompson
People hold lots of different opinions about the European Union, but there’s really only one acceptable opinion to be held about the European Union Youth Orchestra; namely, that they’re brilliant. Their visit to the Edinburgh International Festival consisted of two hour-long concerts, but the hundred musicians, aged 18-26, hailing from 27 countries, crammed more artistry and brilliance into those two concerts than some orchestras manage in a season.Sure, the tone wasn’t always there, and occasionally you could notice a lack of maturity. The violins sounded rather too bright for Elgar’s " Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
More surely than any other London stage, the Globe has opened up our theatrical perspective on different languages. Its triumphant “Globe to Globe” 2012 season presented the Shakespeare canon in 37 different linguistic interpretations.Among those varied treats from, literally, across the globe, the British Sign Language (BSL) production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, from London’s Deafinitely Theatre, was the only one that did not cross national borders; instead, it crossed the boundaries of theatre itself.It’s a direction that the Globe has continued to explore over the years, with the opening Read more ...
David Kettle
Bellringers, Roundabout @ Summerhall ★★★★ Dystopian climate-crisis dramas seemed ten-a-penny at the Fringe a few years back, but they’re far thinner on the ground in 2024. Which makes this deliciously elusive, oblique debut drama from Daisy Hall all the more intriguing, and valued.Clement and Aspinall appear in monk-like cassocks in a church belfry, apparently summoned by a fast-approaching storm. It’s their job to ring the tower’s bells, perhaps to alert residents of their Oxfordshire village to the impending deluge, or even act as some kind of community-protecting talisman simply by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Rollin' Stones are probably destined to be the biggest group in the R&B scene if it continues to flourish. They aren't the jazzmen who were doing trad 18 months back and who have converted their act to keep up with the times. They are genuine R&B fanatics.”So said Record Mirror’s Norman Jopling in May 1963 of the band which soon added a “g” to become The Rolling Stones. He went on to point out that “the number of R&B clubs that have [recently] sprung up is nothing short of fantastic.”At the year’s end the R&B-smitten Jopling wrote two articles for Record Mirror, each Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
My three Proms so far this year have all featured regional BBC orchestras conducted by women, all excellent, and it surely reflects well on the Proms management that they have done so much to address this gender imbalance in recent years. In last night’s Prom 36 the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra were led by the New Zealander Gemma New, who navigated a programme of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Bonis with élan, good humour and a gorgeous black frock coat.Before doing my research, the name Mel Bonis would have suggested an Australian Olympic athlete, or Californian surf champion, but she was in Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Before a word is spoken, a pause held, we hear the seagulls squawking outside, see the (let’s say brown) walls that remind you of the H-Block protests of the 1980s, witness the pitifully small portions for breakfast. If you were in any doubt that we were anywhere other than submerged beneath the fag end of the post-war years of austerity, the clothes confirm it. And a thought surfaces and will jab throughout the two hours runtime: “How different are things today in, say, Clacton?”But Ultz’s design work has grounded Harold Pinter’s second play firmly in pre-Beatles England, where even Elvis Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Grace Mulvey, Assembly Roxy ★★★ Grace Mulvey has been single for five years, she tells us at the top of the show, a matter of some disappointment to her mother back in Dublin. Even moving to London two years ago didn't change her dating status, despite the best efforts of her flatmates. But then, they're lesbians and she's straight, so maybe their advice isn't quite hitting the spot.Mulvey's debut show, Tall Baby, covers a lot of territory, but fortunately she talks at a million miles an hour: she mentions her previous career in tech, dealing with the British public in a deadend job to Read more ...
Simon Thompson
When you stop to think about it, Schwanengesang is a pretty ridiculous thing. Schubert’s final song cycle was famously put together by his publishers after his death, and so it’s barely a cycle at all. Therefore, unlike Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, there’s no story and, even worse, the lurches in mood between the songs are so extreme that they can become absurd.I reflected on that several times while watching Ian Bostridge singing it during this EIF Queen’s Hall recital, because his identification with the songs and their meaning seemed so complete that he could drag the audience into Read more ...
aleks.sierz
At one point, in John Fowles’s 1977 novel The Magus, the guru character in the story compares sexuality before and after the 1960s. He says that although “young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not”, there is also a loss – “a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion”.Sexual restraint has its own tender feelings. It is this emotional landscape that lies at the heart of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s debut play, Peanut Butter & Blueberries, at the Kiln Theatre. It’s a contemporary Muslim love story in which the two lovers never even touch each other.Set in Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
An old woman, inexplicably known as Granny Four, is murdered by a river on the outskirts of a Chinese rural town. A respected detective is put in charge of the investigation, with the weight of his department’s reputation on his shoulders. But this a murky, twisty case that opens and closes with such regularity that it begins to threaten the man’s sanity. Adapted from a short story, on the surface Wei Shujun’s film is a combination of police procedural with film noir, shot with flair and imagination, and imbued with an offbeat sense of humour and appropriately downbeat sensibility. Yet Read more ...
Saskia Baron
In space no one can hear you scream, but they usually can in a cinema. Wednesday night’s gala launch of Alien: Romulus was awash with the gussied-up cast and writer-director Fede Álvarez, alongside assorted Olympians and influencers walking the red carpet.A more enthusiastic audience would have been hard to find, but apart from an auditorium-wide laugh at the reprise of a beloved line from Aliens, there weren’t a lot of gasps, and there were no screams at all. Touted as a return to the original film’s grunge aesthetic and practical effects, Alien: Romulus set itself up for comparison and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It seems cricketer-turned-TV star Freddie Flintoff was lucky to survive his crash in a Morgan three-wheeled roadster in December 2022, and his recuperation has been painful and traumatic. As he explained in the opening episode of his second Field of Dreams series, the accident, which occurred during filming for Top Gear, is going to have long-term consequences. “I struggle with anxiety. I have nightmares, I have flashbacks. It’s been so hard to cope with.”He also had to undergo a series of operations, and didn’t appear in public for many months. But he was determined to continue with his Read more ...