Reviews
Rachel Halliburton
Few singers can match the exhilarating range of counter-tenor Iestyn Davies’ performances, whether it’s in the free-soaring clarity of his voice in rapid recitative-style passages or the white heat of intensity he brings to sustained notes.In this heady, captivating late-night Prom, he – together with the English Concert, inspirationally directed by Kristian Bezuidenhout (pictured below) – delivered a programme of Bach that was as linguistically fascinating as it was musically uplifting.The opening piece was the solo cantata Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, which Bach wrote in 1726 when he Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Several years ago I got chatting to a young tenor who was training at the Royal Northern College of Music. He was enjoying his studies, but complained that, as a British tenor, he got offered a lot of Britten and Handel but not an awful lot else.There was Britten aplenty in this recital from Nick Pritchard, another young British tenor, but it was a shrewd move for him to begin his recital with French language repertoire because it showed up a side of his voice that I found as surprising as it was lovely.Put simply, there’s a gorgeous sweetness to Pritchard’s voice that knocked me for six. The Read more ...
David Kettle
CHOO CHOO! (Or... Have You Ever Thought About ****** **** *****? (Cos I Have)), Pleasance Dome ★★★★Nye and Duncan seem to live a charmed life. Clad in primary-coloured dungarees, they begin their days with a song, and see what adventures the radio has in store for them. Maybe today they’ll be play-acting a game show, or recreating a famous movie scene. Anything to fill the time. Most importantly, they’re counting the days until their holiday. Well, Duncan is.There are a lot of laughs to be had at new company StammerMouth’s slightly sinister send-up of children’s entertainers, but Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Everything is Alive opens with all that could be wanted from a Slowdive album. “Shanty” is just-under six minutes of out-of-focus, shimmering aural fog in which guitars throb and drums are a distant pulse. An acid-house-type heartbeat is offset against a harpsichord-like refrain recalling Broadcast. Lines drift in about a burning candle and the arrival of night. It all seems to be about the passing of time.Text-book Slowdive then, on a line between their 1993 second album Souvlaki and its 1995 follow-up Pygmalion. The latter became their last release before they split the same year. They Read more ...
aleks.sierz
This is a play about censorship in a totalitarian state – but, no, I’m not reviewing The Pillowman again. Instead, I’m watching A Mirror by Sam Holcroft, a playwright who – as her 2015 play Rules for Living amply illustrated – is interested in playful games with the idea of theatricality.This time, she explores ideas about fact and fiction in a tricksy story set in a repressive regime whose Almeida Theatre production stars the always watchable, and highly bankable, Jonny Lee Miller.The plot is about Mr Čelik (Miller), director of the Ministry of Culture in a dystopian no-place, whose job is Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s the summer holidays, and though Georgie (Lola Campbell) is only 12, she’s managing to keep her council house looking just the way her mum liked it. There may be a few spiders hanging around but they have names and personalities and there’s food in the cupboard, even if it’s been paid for from the proceeds of selling the bikes Georgie has stolen. Though her mother died recently, social services aren’t too fussed as they believe her uncle is looking after her. They don’t think it’s odd that he’s called Winston Churchill, or that when they phone to check up, he answers their Read more ...
David Kettle
Distant Memories of the Near Future, Summerhall ★★★★About three decades into the future, love has been "solved" – with (what else?) an algorithm, and a healthy splash of AI. It’s so successful, in fact, that states worldwide officially mandate computer-generated coupledom because of its benefits for productivity and consumption. Heaven help you if you’re one of the rare undesirables, unmatchable with another by the ubiquitous Q-PID app. Meanwhile, all the flowers have disappeared, asteroids are being mined for their rare minerals (now exhausted on Earth), and a compulsary daily 10- Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
Fans of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's timeless classic The Red Shoes shouldn’t rush to The Red Shoes: Next Step expecting a sequel. This sentimental Australian teen drama is more of a step-change than a follow-up.At least its American star, Juliet Doherty, was a professional ballerina before she took up acting – as was her Scottish counterpart, Moira Shearer, in the 1948 film – so the dance sequences feel pretty authentic, even if they’re shot in semi-darkness for some reason.The two movies have other things in common. The denouement in Powell and Pressburger’s masterful film Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Janine Harouni, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Names and identity feature heavily in Janine Harouni’s new show, Man’oushe, itself titled about where her family nickname comes from. Heavily pregnant (the reason why she is ending the show’s Edinburgh run tonight), Harouni tells us her baby’s origin story, and it’s by turns moving and hilarious, as she brings us up to speed with her life since we last saw her at the Fringe in 2019, when she was nominated for best newcomer.Harouni talks about her mixed feelings about becoming a mother, in part formed by her relationship with her parents. And, as an Read more ...
Prom 50: Samson, Academy of Ancient Music review - a gradual build in musical and dramatic intensity
Rachel Halliburton
1743 was the year in which Handel presented both the Messiah and Samson to Londoners – and for most audience members the merits of one clearly eclipsed the other. Fascinatingly it was Samson that was seen to be the more successful – after breaking box office records, with eight performances between its opening on 18 February and the end of March, it remained highly in demand for nine subsequent seasons.In an evening that built in both dramatic and musical intensity, Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music took on the challenges of Handel’s epic about the Old Testament’s most Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Every time I have heard Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, some wiseacre in the bar afterwards trots out the predictable joke that it’s a cheap concert as the pianist gets only half the fee. For all that this is obviously nonsense, most pianists go on to play a two-handed encore to set the record straight. Yuja Wang, in her Edinburgh Festival concert with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, chose to play a whole other piano concerto, in this case the same composer's G major.The two concertos required a change of costume for our flamboyant soloist, from shimmering purple to sunset yellow ( Read more ...
James Saynor
Thespians and thieves have often pooled their resources in movies, notably in the work of Woody Allen. Since acting is basically a form of lying, goes the joke, actors dine at the same Runyon-esque table as people who nick stuff, and this French comedy offers a new story of a crim who needs some muscle from the theatrical arts.Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg) is an actor at a time of life when she wants to quit the stage and settle down with a charming, burly convict called Michel (Roschdy Zem), whom she met when giving an acting class at the local Lyon slammer. She dotes on him to the point of Read more ...