Reviews
Jack Barron
The language of poetic technique is perhaps weighted towards rupture, rather than reparation: lines end and break, we count beats and stress, experience caesurae (literally ‘cuttings’), and mark punctuation (literally ‘to prick’). Juxtaposition sets things in contradistinction; sonnets have firm boundaries; conservatively, form protects tradition. Even free-verse was never free: Eliot’s famous formulation included the caveat that a simple meter must always – or cannot help but – haunt the poetic line. Poems, for their formal preservation, depend upon strict border-control.Customs is Iranian- Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Just when you’ve relaxed a little, privilege duly checked and confident that you won’t be guilt-tripped for nipping into that disabled loo a few years ago at the National (c’mon, the interval was nearly over and needs must), FlawBored drop a bomb into the narrative. The temperature in the room plummets, a real coup de théâtre is effected and I'm still processing it. Yep, they went there. After garnering awards at the Vaults Festival (that’s not research, they tell you and they tell you why too), Aarian Mehrabani, Chloe Palmer and Samuel Brewer (pictured below) bring their meta- Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
For its 22nd concert the hugely successful initiative, Through The Noise, took its audience to The Jago in Dalston, the live music venue formerly known as Passing Clouds. Here, on a stage more familiar with reggae, blues and Afrobeat, 25-year-old classical trumpeter Aaron Akugbo joined forces with harpist Milo Harper (pictured below) for a series of sultry, haunting numbers that explored the possibilities of this unusual pairing.Both players are rising stars of the classical music scene – Akugbo will make his Proms solo debut later this year with the Haydn Trumpet Concerto while the multi Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Before even a note was struck, Yard Act’s singer James Smith was setting the bar high. “Over the past two days everyone we’ve met in Glasgow has been telling us this is the best gig we’ll ever play”, he declared, as soon as the Leeds band arrived onstage. They then proceeded over the following 70 minutes to deliver on that expectation, with an evening that’s among the best the storied old Barrowland has ever seen.That might sound like overzealous hype, but this was a beefed up set that possessed power, passion and playfulness all at once. This current short jaunt for the group is essentially Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Russo brothers, makers of Amazon Prime’s much-hyped, $300m new spy drama, decided to keep the concept simple – it’s Good versus Evil. In the Good corner we have Citadel, a super-secret global spy network which has the modest ambition of keeping everybody, everywhere in the world, safe.The black-hat guys with the mean expressions and sometimes beards are agents of Manticore, a malign SPECTRE-style operation funded by eight super-wealthy families who want to control everything, everywhere in the world. Manticore – is it really named after Emerson Lake & Palmer’s 1970s record label? – Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
One of the essays in the booklet accompanying Loma Northern Soul describes the titular label as an “outlet aimed at secondary or tertiary record markets, issuing product that it was hoped would prove strong in R&B radio, yet had the potential to crossover and do battle with Motown in the pop charts”.In this reading, Loma Records was either addressing distinct markets – as other labels specifically did for, say, country – or was a dumping ground for recordings which didn’t make the grade as records which could be promoted as chart friendly or for pop radio. Or some of both at the same time Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Does the “special relationship” really exist? Judging by Netflix’s sparky new political drama, yes it does, with London-based CIA agent Eidra Graham (Ali Ahn) going out of her way to spell out the unique intelligence-sharing arrangements between the US and the UK. Just as long as everyone remembers that the Americans are well and truly in charge, nothing can possibly go wrong.The titular diplomat is Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), who thought she was about to be posted to Kabul but is instead diverted to become the US ambassador in London, following an attack on a British aircraft carrier in the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
There was a jolting eco-themed work onstage in London recently, but sadly A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, a Headlong company collaboration with director Katie Mitchell and a number of international producing houses, wasn’t it. The performance that jolted all who saw it was by Nederlands Dans Theater, whose NDT1 group brought to Sadler’s Wells Figures in Extinction [1.0], a powerful piece by Complicite’s Simon McBurney and the choreographer Crystal Pite. The dancers twisted their limbs and torsos into imitations of 12 of the now-lost species McBurney selected to read out Read more ...
David Nice
Rigorous, hauntingly original and unlike each other, Britten’s three numbered quartets could share a programme and still stake equal claims on our attention. That might be tough on the players, but the Castalians haven’t been easy on themselves in the three concerts they’ve given to share out the honours between Britten and other composers.Their previous spectacular pulled off the supreme challenge of twinning the “Grosse Fuge” as finale of Beethoven’s Op. 130 Quartet with the huge Chacony that crowns Britten’s Second. The Passacaglia of his Third, completed in 1975 not long before his death Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Here's another small gem of a film graced with a fine central performance by Jim Broadbent, after his lovely turn in The Duke. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is, like the earlier film, the story of an eccentric older man who embarks on a risky enterprise, though it’s less comic and twice as affecting.Broadbent has another grumpy wife here: after Helen Mirren in The Duke, Penelope Wilton (pictured below with Broadbent) plays Maureen, a sour woman with little to bring joy to her days. His Harold is a quiet man, living modestly in retirement in south Devon, who is suddenly galvanised into Read more ...
Gary Naylor
It’s apt that this new play, with characters moving in and out of Paris either side of World War I, is staged at this intimate theatre, one that always has the ambience of a below-ground oubliette. These bohemians are not penniless and cold as were Puccini’s, but they still wrestle with the bittersweet complexities of a love that burns too brightly, one that fuels a ménage à trois that does not end well.Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play takes us back to Henri-Pierre Roché’s 1953 novel, best known as the source for François Truffaut’s celebrated 1962 movie, a staple of Best Film lists for half a Read more ...
Robert Beale
“Let the organ thunder!” is the sentiment a lot of us will associate with an orchestral concert featuring the king of instruments. The Hallé’s programme with Anna Lapwood as soloist (repeating, from her BBC Proms debut with them in 2021, the Saint-Saëns “Organ” Symphony) seemed designed to evoke that thought.But the organ in the Bridgewater Hall isn’t exactly made for thundering. Big Bertha it is not. What it is really good at is a light, clear and sometimes fiery sound – ideal for Poulenc’s 1939 Organ Concerto, which was the undoubted highlight of the evening.There was light and airy French Read more ...