Reviews
Hanna Weibye
If, standing on a station platform, your arms want to make shapes in the air; if, walking home, you are mesmerised by the curved toes of your shoes against the pavement; if, in the kitchen, a stray salad leaf on the floor transforms before your eyes into a tiny green lizard, head up, questioning – then (if you are over the age of 10 and reasonably level-headed) you have probably consumed some mind-altering substance.In my case, last Saturday night, it was (honest, m’lud!) nothing more dangerous than a cocktail of contemporary dance + Shakespeare, served up cool and cloudy by Canadian Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The UK premiere of Dmitry Krymov’s Opus No.7 begins at 5pm. When it finishes two and half hours later, a sun-dappled evening is bustling with the opening weekend of the Brighton Festival. At a nearby pub friends ask, “What was it like? What was it about?” For once I am lost for words. Describing Opus No.7 is akin to conveying an emotionally moving dream which, laid out prosaically, becomes gibberish. The production is as much performance art happening as theatre, zapping the brain with a concatenation of imagery, like a Quay Brothers animation brought to life.Krymov is the toast of Moscow’s Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The forces of death and life come up against each other in the strange, somehow impressive Slovenian war drama Silent Sonata. I say “Slovenian” only because director Janez Burger hails from there, and that’s where some of the filming took place (the rest was in Ireland, which was the major, but not the only European co-producer of the film), but the cast and crew are markedly international. And though we can see it’s a war situation loosely based on the former Yugoslavia, there’s no hint at what corner of that conflict it’s refering to.There’s a risk with such projects that the result becomes Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
On the back wall of Birmingham Symphony Hall’s great oval space, two musicians are poised on a glass balcony that gives the illusion of not being there at all. A small square of warm light picks them out, vivid against the hall’s darkness. So framed, Saint-Saëns’ gentle Prière for cello and organ keeps its intimacy even in that large space, the two instruments blending into one equal sound that is clear, golden, and not too sweet.The dancing promised us by the concert’s title was nowhere in evidence, but this opening nonetheless set the tone for the rest of the evening, which was Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The lawns, fields, meadows and sheds of the Henry Moore Foundation themselves exemplify the notion of in-and-out, exterior-interior and are thus the ideal setting for exploring the notion of body and void in Moore’s work and the way it is echoed in the sculpture of succeeding generations. Thus we have a subliminally provocative setting for a succinct, even oddly exquisite (however monumental) selection of the contemporary sculptural avant-garde, varyingly echoing in new guises notions of inside-outside which we can now see obsessively preoccupied Moore. Moore himself, although a teacher Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s been a bloody week on the London stage. First Titus Andronicus maims and mutilates at the Globe, and now at English National Opera Frank McGuinness and Julian Anderson bring us a distillation of Sophocles’ three Theban plays, complete with eye-gouging and assorted hangings. But while Lucy Bailey found eloquent meaning in Shakespeare’s brutality, could Anderson do the same in this, his first opera?This is thoughtful, hard-fought art that resists immediate assimilation. Thebans is the considered response to recent ENO premieres – the baffling Sunken Garden and insubstantial Two Boys – Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Wayne Cochran: Goin’ Back to Miami – The Soul Sides 1965-1970With his dyed-blond pompadour, Wayne Cochran looks bizarre enough. But once he opens his mouth, the weirdness level is kicked into orbit. He sounds exactly like a wild cross between James Brown and Otis Redding. Although white, his soul music is not the smooth or sweet blue-eyed fare of a Len Barry or a Righteous Brothers. Goin’ Back to Miami convincingly makes the case for Cochran as a soul great.The compilation opens with the self-penned 1966 single and title track (watch a slightly fuzzy looking TV performance on the next Read more ...
Veronica Lee
David Baddiel last did solo stand-up in 2004, when he walked out of a corporate gig after calling a bunch of bankers the c-word. Since then, he's spent his time mostly writing novels and doing some television and radio projects. It's his general absence from TV, he tells us in Fame: Not the Musical - an intelligent, witty and thoughtful examination of modern celebrity - that arouses pity in some members of the public who recognise him. If he's not on the telly, his career must be on the skids, right?Baddiel first became famous as one half of two immensely successful double acts, firstly with Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Zac Efron has well and truly left behind his cute High School Musical persona. First he bared all in That Awkward Moment and now in Bad Neighbours he plays his first unsympathetic role – but his fans will be delighted to know that he gets lots of opportunities to show off his six-pack again in Nicholas Stoller's winning comedy.Efron plays Teddy, president of a college fraternity who move in next door to Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, pictured below), a thirtysomething couple with a new baby. At first Mac and Kelly, who used to be party animals themselves and reminisce Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Lucy Bailey’s Titus Andronicus doesn’t pull any punches (or stabbings, smotherings and throat-slittings, for that matter). Bursting into a Globe smoky with incense, with shouts and drums, forcing itself at us and on us, this is a production whose physicality is its true language. But while anyone going for the gore will get their money’s worth – the opening night added a few more to the tally of fainting audience members – they’ll also get something better: a show that’s shocking, certainly, but whose provocations are never empty.Much is made of Titus as an early play. Criticism has Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Reason, tolerance, liberalism…these are the qualities that defined the Georgian Age, and for which it deserves to be better known, and more widely admired. Lucy Worsley stated her argument with admirable clarity in the opening moments of the programme, and her intellectual confidence and rigour made this one of the most informative and enjoyable of the many recent BBC history series. Worsley breezed through the historical landscape of the age, uncovering crucial aspects of politics, religion, art, satire, and finance. She span a fascinating web of connections and created a vivid portrait of Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The Kinks’ music deserves more than another jukebox musical. Joe Penhall has instead collaborated with Ray Davies on a show about the pain and compromise musicians go through to fill those jukeboxes. Most of The Kinks’ biggest hits are here somewhere. But, in the Hampstead Theatre’s first musical, they’re used in a way reminiscent of the site of two previous Davies productions, Theatre Royal Stratford East. The songs joyously reach out to the audience, even as they are shown to be rooted in a wider, difficult and daft world of class, family, professional struggle and private agony.The basic Read more ...