Reviews
Adam Sweeting
If you’d invested a thousand dollars with Warren Buffett in 1965, your stake would have grown to more than than five million bucks today. If the UK had followed one of Buffett’s golden rules of investment – Don’t Get Into Debt – our clapped-out rust-bucket of a nation might now feel like a very different place. Buffett's take on debt is that "if you're smart you don't need it, and if you're dumb you've got no business using it," which Gordon Brown should have etched on the inside of his glass eye.On the other hand, if everybody copied Warren Buffett’s diet, which consists of T-bone steaks, Read more ...
sheila.johnston
London, 1961. Duffle coats are the ne plus ultra in hipster cool, everybody smokes like fury and black people are known as negroes in enlightened society (and even enlightened society wouldn't want them moving in next door). In the congenial, shiny-surfaced world of this coming-of-age comedy, the Beatles' first LP is still two years away, and so is sexual intercourse, but not for Jenny. For Jenny, 1961 is an annus mirabilis, the year in which this skittish 16-year-old schoolgirl acquires a wealthy, worldly older admirer. And, being a deal more beautiful than Philip Larkin, she doesn't have to Read more ...
anne.billson
Blame it on the bloody menarche. The combination of schoolgirls and horror is so intoxicating it's a wonder there haven't been more films like Carrie, Suspiria or Ginger Snaps to exploit that tricky adolescent surge of oestrogen. So I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Jennifer's Body isn't worthy to be set alongside The Craft, let alone any of the aforementioned titles. It has all the ingredients for guilty pleasure - cheerleader transformed into man-eating succubus, high-school students played by actresses in their mid-twenties, girl-on-girl snogging, indie rock musicians who've sold their Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When the Royal Shakespeare Company asked Roy Williams to write something with Much Ado About Nothing as his inspiration, he didn’t merely update the romantic comedy. Rather he took some characters and plotlines and cleverly wove them into Days of Significance, a shocking and powerful play about the Iraq war, which was staged at Stratford-upon-Avon in 2007. This touring version, which I saw at Northern Stage in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has some of the original cast and is again directed by Maria Aberg in a thrilling, visceral production.We are in a southern English town on a Friday night, with Read more ...
robert.sandall
It’s taken David McAlmont over 15 years to find the right outlet for his remarkable voice and songs but, fingers crossed, it looks as if he's finally done it. In prospect, McAlmont's collaboration with Michael Nyman and his band, which received its first public airing last night at the Union Chapel, seems rather random. What, you might well ask, has a man with the vocal chops of a soul legend such as Curtis Mayfield got to say to a minimalist composer and soundtrack specialist with a gift for classical pastiche? Seldom have the musical codes of the street and the salon been more obliquely Read more ...
robert.sandall
It’s taken David McAlmont over 15 years to find the right outlet for his remarkable voice and songs but, fingers crossed, it looks as if he's finally done it. In prospect, McAlmont's collaboration with Michael Nyman and his band, which received its first public airing last night at the Union Chapel, seems rather random. What, you might well ask, has a man with the vocal chops of a soul legend such as Curtis Mayfield got to say to a minimalist composer and soundtrack specialist with a gift for classical pastiche? Seldom have the musical codes of the street and the salon been more obliquely Read more ...
Jasper Rees
To think the unthinkable, are we now getting towards the thin end of The Thick of It? The show remains unchallenged as the most bilious, urgent comedy on television. No argument there. It coruscates, it eviscerates – even a thin Thick of It does all those aggressive things to the body politic that satire should. But is there now the merest hint, just the faintest smidgin, of weariness, of heaving itself once more into the ring to land a few more blows on the clapped-out mob currently downing dregs of Pinot Grigio in the Last Chance Saloon?The Thick of It kicked down the door again last night Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
We Brucknerians aren't easy to please. Few musical partnerships get the official seal of approval. Horenstein and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Wand and the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic, Knappertsbusch and the Vienna Philharmonic. These are among the handful of collaborations that have gained a place in my Brucknerian pantheon. Last night’s performance of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, however, saw the London Philharmonic Orchestra and their French-Canadian guest conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin catapult themselves into these exalted ranks.Nézet-Séguin is Read more ...
Ismene Brown
In the Ballets Russes centenary year it’s worth remembering that the iconic Diaghilev ballets were only the few lasting landmarks in a sea of constant novelties and shipwrecks. So if Christopher Wheeldon doesn’t take many great reviews back to the States after Morphoses’ third visit to London, he should be roundly applauded for being so generous to fellow-choreographers and mounting this enterprise in stark times that need initiative more than ever. But if only he’d married the first programme's Ratmansky Boléro to his own two in the second programme and got rid of the dross.Continuum, his Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Alastair McGowan’s larynx is an amazing thing; it allows him to do 120 voices in 120 minutes during his solo touring show, The One and Many..., which I saw at Journal Tyne Theatre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Not all the impressions are spot-on and there’s an over-reliance on sport-related material, but this is a tour-de-force of the impressionist’s artMany of his characters are familiar from his television show The Big Impression which he performed with sometime partner and comic foil Ronni Ancona. His David Beckham (and Victoria, which is a new voice) continues to be a delight, while his ex- Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Family life can be bad for your health. Especially if you are an overweight teenager. Take Anna for example. She's 15, a bit on the plump side, and having a rough time. At school, where - horror of horrors - her Mum is a teacher, she's attracted the attention of some bullies. But worse than unwelcome attention is neglect: her Dad is too busy writing a book about saving the planet from climate change to pay much attention to his daughter, or his wife. But help is on its way. But when Anna’s wired uncle, Terry, comes to stay, things start to look up. At least he talks to her. And stands up Read more ...