Reviews
Sebastian Scotney
The Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (FIJM), the largest in the world, is genuinely on a roll. The head of programming of the huge event, which takes place all around the Quartier des Spectacles in the centre of the city, says in this year's wrap-up press release that “a new wind is blowing through our beloved jazz world, and we can be proud today to see the public rallying around. A booming new scene with legends leading the way: Vive le jazz!”This thought, as he told me in an interview, is more than just a hunch. Statistics issued for last year’s 42nd edition showed that 52% of Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It’s impossible to think about Jean Cooke’s work without taking into account her relationship with her husband, the painter John Bratby, because his controlling personality profoundly affected every aspect of her life.Had it not been for him, she might never have become a painter at all. She studied sculpture and pottery and, when they met in 1953, was running her own pottery in Sussex. They married the same year, but Bratby didn’t want a potter for a wife, so Cooke went to the Royal College of Art to study painting.Bratby’s attitude was still ambivalent, though. He would only allow her Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The farewell for KISS has lasted so long that this Glasgow show, their final ever UK gig, came four years after the End of the Road tour first stopped off in the city. Admittedly that is partly down to the coronavirus scuppering touring plans for a couple of years, but even without that there is a suspicion a group who have monetised themselves so effectively over the years might have found a reason for another trip back here.After all, this tour also featured the chance for afternoon VIP meet and greets for a few thousand quid, while a “golden circle” was in operation down the front, a sight Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
First things first. The support acts at events like this usually get completely overlooked, but it would be frankly criminal not to give a mention to a superb set by the Chicks. They dropped the “Dixie” from their original name because of its now “problematic” political connotations, and their critical comments about Dubya Bush provoked a career-changing backlash, but they’ve bounced back feistier than ever.Armed with an arsenal of instruments sure to bring joy to country music fans – dobro, pedal steel, fiddle, banjo, mandolin – they surged through a set of old favourites, including “Cowboy Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
One of the most striking scenes in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 outer-space allegory Solaris is psychologist Kris Kelvin’s first encounter with a being which seems to be his wife, who had died a decade earlier. The unsettling incident’s inherent tension is heightened by its sonic backdrop: rumbling, a peculiarly musical pink noise, lightning-like bolts of sound. This was created on the ANS synthesiser (AHC in Russian script), a device invented in Soviet-era Russia.The inspirational figure for the ANS was Boris Yankovsky, who was working with creating synthetic sound from the early 1930s. In 1932, Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
When flamenco first came out of the shadows and started to fill big theatres, it was like something out of a historical pageant. The shows that played London in the early 1990s harked back to an imagined gypsy past where old men hammered rhythms on blacksmiths’ anvils and women swirled extravagant frills. The crudely amplified music lost much of its detail but audiences lapped it up anyway. Since then theatrical flamenco has come a long way, dropping the campfire shtick and investing in designer threads and sound design. Leading the charge has been Sara Baras, now 52, who first came to notice Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
British-Moroccan director Fyzal Boulifa’s second feature is a departure from his first, the brilliant and disturbing Lynn + Lucy of 2020. That was set on an Essex housing estate; this one takes place in Morocco.Like Lynn + Lucy, it’s beautifully paced, outstandingly fresh and original, with some of the same themes of class, shame and identity, and takes its title from Vincent Sherman’s 1950 film noir starring Joan Crawford as a woman who claws her way out of poverty.Boulifa follows a close-knit mother and son. Sleeping on the same small mattress, they're constantly on the move, barely getting Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Trauma is the source of identity politics. In the case of African-Americans, the experience of brutal slavery, exploitative colonialism and violent racism are defining experiences in their history.Although many recent black dramas have contested this with images of a more celebratory kind of identity, it remains a standard trope, as proved by Kwame Kwei-Armah’s 2013 play, Beneatha’s Place, which he directs himself at the Young Vic, where he is artistic director. In it he channels, among other things, his own experiences of living and working in the United States between 2011 and 2018.An Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This loose-limbed movie follows Shabu, a 14-year-old boy who is growing up on the public housing estate known as the Peperklip (Paperclip) in Rotterdam. It’s the summer holidays and he’d like to hang out with his girlfriend and his mates, but first he’s got to sort out some trouble. Shabu’s beloved grandma flew home to see her family in Suriname, and the lad took her car for a joyride and trashed it. Now he has to work out how to make enough money so his grandma can replace her car when she gets back.Making and selling frozen popsicles is one enterprise he tackles. We watch him concoct a Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
After 27 years and half a dozen instalments of a franchise predicated on its ability to up the ante on itself to ever more dizzying heights of ingenious, character-driven, genuinely heart-in-mouth action, the killjoy or cynic may well be lining up an alternative title for the latest: Mission: Impossible – Anti-climax. But they would never get to use it. Not a chance. Dead Reckoning – Part One lives up to its fanfare, and then some. Its near three-hour running time barely has a loose thread, as it seamlessly stitches tricksy, diabolical, topical intrigue with pathos, comedy Read more ...
Sarah Kent
At 94, Yayoi Kusama is said to be the world’s most popular living artist. People queue for hours to spend a few minutes inside one of her Infinity Rooms, spaces with walls mirrored to create infinite reflections.Inviting her to inaugurate Manchester’s new Aviva Studios is an astute move, then. Her installation You, Me & The Balloons (main picture) is bound to attract crowds to the nearly finished venue built to house Factory International, organisers of the Manchester International Festival (MIF), and to host exhibitions, theatre and music gigs.Reminiscent of Tate Modern’s Turbine Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Whether you believe that Ellen Brammar’s play, Modest, newly arrived in London from Hull Truck Theatre, succeeds or not, rather depends on your criteria for evaluating theatre. On storytelling, character development and nuance, it is two and a half hours that goes nowhere. On representation, audience appeal and addressing past injustices, well, the reaction in the house to this Middle Child and Milk Presents collaboration will confirm that the job is done.Elizabeth Thompson’s The Roll Call was the sensation of the Royal Academy’s 1874 Summer Exhibition. Owing something to Gustave Courbet and Read more ...