Reviews
David Nice
So it turns out there isn’t a problem with Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), a stroppy mock-epic I thought couldn’t ever love again, when constantly singing phrases from Antonio Pappano and the LSO turn it into an hallucinogenic opera for orchestra.It seems too good to be true that 10 days after a Philharmonia Don Juan to die for from Jakub Hrůša, who will take over from Pappano at the Royal Opera, along came another performance which felt legendary even as we listened. We have to hear way more Strauss from both great conductors.Perhaps not so much from Samuel Coleridge- Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It all ended in great style, the 20th edition of The Transatlantic Sessions which closed out its tour at London’s Southbank Centre on Saturday. The line-up of musicians is, of course, an embarras de richesse: a house band led by Aly Bain, master fiddler and Scottish icon, and Jerry Douglas, dobro and steel guitar maestro, a Nashville legend whose mantelpiece bears the weight of 14 Grammys.They were joined by the cream of Anglo-American music-making – John Doyle, Phil Cunningham, James Mackintosh and John McCusker among others – each given their moment in the spotlight but mostly content just Read more ...
David Kettle
You’d hardly call a director particularly perceptive for highlighting Lady Macbeth as the true power behind the throne, scheming and cajoling her husband’s bloody ascent to the crown. In her audacious, provocative and thoroughly compelling Macbeth (an undoing), however, writer/director Zinnie Harris goes much, much further – so far, in fact, that a couple of her characters seem confused as to whether Lady Macbeth is herself the King.Harris modestly subtitles her rethink "after Shakespeare" – it’s the latest in her ongoing collection of rethinks of classic texts that have included This Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two intriguing themes and two great guest artists were offered by the BBC Philharmonic to their Saturday night audience in the Bridgewater Hall: the themes were what “classicism” really is, and the variety of music inspired by (or written for) dance.The artists were Angela Hewitt, soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, and Sir Andrew Davis, making another welcome visit to Manchester. You might say that a third theme of the evening was the chance to see the two of them deliver a masterclass in piano playing and orchestral conducting.Classicism, then: what is it? Whole books have been Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The most commercially and consistently successful band on DinDisc was Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Martha and the Muffins also made a mark. Label mates The Monochrome Set were cool, distinctive but not so chart friendly. The Revillos were less reserved, as was New Wave of British Heavy Metal outfit Dedringer. The patronage of Heaven 17 brought dance troupe Hot Gossip to the label.DinDisc was an offshoot of Virgin Records with arty leanings. Extant from autumn 1979 to early 1981 it was in keeping with the Charisma subsidiary Pre, which operated over a similar period. Both paved the way Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Magic Mike began as a cautionary tale rooted in Channing Tatum’s spell as a teenage stripper, then morphed into a franchise of reality and theatre shows. Now this second sequel brings original director Steven Soderbergh back, and leaps into pure fantasy.We find Tatum’s super-stripper Mike washed up at 40, with his much touted furniture business killed by Covid. “Alone and adrift in an ocean of failed relationships and unrealised dreams,” as the initially mysterious female narrator noir-ishly puts it, his stripping days are done. Until, that is, he’s recognised while bartending for unhappy Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Women Talking is very powerful. It was adapted by writer-director Sarah Polley from the novel that Miriam Toews, raised a Mennonite in Canada, based on terrible events that took place in an isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009.The book can be slow-going at times. But the film – shot by cinematographer Luc Montpellier in muted, desaturated tones, with a cast that includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw, and Frances McDormand in a cameo role – is moving, vibrant, and compelling.At first glance, it might seem an unpromisingly static Read more ...
Heather Neill
The frantic world of finance moves fast, its giddy successes and thundering crashes causing ripples – sometimes tsunami waves – that affect us all. When director Sam Mendes and adaptor Ben Power first brought the story of the Lehman family to the National Theatre stage in 2018, a mere decade had past since the catastrophic economic crash, triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, in 2008. In the five intervening years we have seen the effects of a Trump presidency, Brexit, a European war and the Truss mini-budget. Perhaps, as Power said in an interview, modern populist Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Catherine Cohen made quite an impact at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe, where she won best newcomer in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for The Twist? She's Gorgeous. Global events have delayed her follow-up and a UK debut tour, but here it is, and Come For Me was worth waiting for.The stage persona essayed in the Texan-transplanted to New Yorker's debut hour – a vain, self-obsessed diva – is now fully realised, as Cohen tells us about her life. There are enough biographical details in there (Catholic mother, Jewish father, comfortable upbringing) to ground the story in reality, but she builds an Read more ...
Andy Morgan
During morning and evening rush hour, Bamako seizes up under the pressure of all the cars, motorbikes, trucks and buses, bringing the three bridges over the Niger River to a standstill and testing Mali’s reputation for patience and humour to its limits. From a mere 130,000 at independence in 1960, the population of the city has now ballooned to over three million. Every week, thousands of refugees fleeing violence in the rest of the country, two thirds of which is effectively in a state of anarchy, move into crowded camps on the outskirts. It’s a miracle that the city functions at all. But it Read more ...
David Nice
You can brush aside any problems septuagenarian pianists may have in the toughest repertoire, especially if they give you more than glimpses of why they’re legends in the first place. Those were frequent from the masterly Dmitri Alexeev, long inclined to prefer passing on wisdom to a new generation of pianists as Professor at the Royal College of Music and in his other home in Rieti over the treadmill of recital giving.This was Alexeev's only London recital this season. Enriched by the extraordinary surroundings of the newly-restored Leighton House, and the fine acoustics of the big studio Read more ...
aleks.sierz
With the total loss of its Arts Council funding, Hampstead Theatre’s future as a specialist new writing venue is in doubt. But before anything drastically changes, the playwrights and plays developed by Roxanna Silbert, who was edged out as artistic director in December last year, are still coming through.One of them is Ruby Thomas, whose Either, her 2019 drama in the studio here, was thrillingly experimental. Boy, can she write! Her latest, this time on the main stage, is Linck & Mülhahn, a historical queer love story which features a gender-pioneering couple.The scene is Saxony in the Read more ...