Reviews
Aleks Sierz
The best playwrights create word magic – and when that happens, you can’t miss it. Other writers produce journalism, or teaching materials. Sadly, for me, Christine Bacon is one of the latter, and her latest 90-minute play, A Fine Idea at the Arcola studio, is a didactic account of 80 years of international aid. Inspired by Jason Hickel’s 2017 book about global inequality, The Divide, her play is a passionately felt critique of international development which questions whether us liberals really want to change the world – or are we just more comfortable with the idea, a fine one, of helping Read more ...
johncarvill
Fans of classic Hollywood movies are liable to suffer a stab of frustration these days, when polls or vox pops canvas people’s favourite films. Selections seem to skew towards the worthy; there’s a performative whiff to a lot of it. Those Criterion Closet Pick videos are a case in point: “Pixie Buttermore, breakout star of Slithering Zombies 4, selects Woman in the Dunes”. God forbid somebody should pick something from the Golden Age.In this context, Some Like it Hot – now playing nationally as part of the celebrations around Marilyn Monroe’s centenary – stands out in the top 50 of Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
In his fascinating but overlong and sometimes unfocussed ‘political life’ of James Joyce – the biographer himself died in 2021 so was perhaps unable to make the necessary cuts to a 909-page text – Frank Callanan gives us a portrait of the artist as a young socialist who became disillusioned with socialism once he left Ireland in 1904 for exile.It’s an interesting revisionist view because scholarship has often tended to promote a depoliticised reading of Joyce’s work in order to burnish the novelist’s credentials as a god of 20th-century literary modernism, transcending politics in much the Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The World Cup is everywhere in Scotland these days, even among the country’s gigging venues. Rolled up Saltires were visible on the balconies of the O2 Academy, a reminder that the Glasgow venue is hosting watch parties for the national team’s matches, and when Lola Young came back onstage for the encore she was serenaded by fans belting out “no Scotland no party”, to which the Londoner cheerfully joined in.Roughly an hour earlier, the 25-year-old had walked out to the sort of wild reaction that greeted John McGinn hitting the back of the net against Haiti, with screams and hollers from the Read more ...
India Lewis
Madfabulous, director Celyn Jones’ retelling of the true story of an heir who bankrupted a peerage, is a truly beautiful film – worth a watch if only for the excellent outfits worn by its iconic queer antagonist (played by Callum Scott Howells). Sailing into his new life, wearing his mother’s burgundy dress, Henry Paget, fifth Marquess of Anglesey (Ynys Môn), "Toppy" (as he is nicknamed), has come to live by his mother’s rule: “always be true to yourself, Henry, it’s the greatest gift you have.” However, tragedy is already near at hand – Toppy coughs into a handkerchief in the first Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
After his record-breaking and warmly remembered Love On Tour, Harry Styles is back with a fresh, slightly more experimental twist on universal, blockbusting live pop. The revision of his performance style is subtle enough that Together, Together feels comfortable and familiar but the minor rebrand that came with his latest album Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. sufficiently spices things up. Following a glittery, feel good singalong with Shania Twain to warm things up, “Are You Listening Yet?” opens the show, with tangible gratitude flying through the stadium from Styles in the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
“Do we really need another Anish Kapoor exhibition?” I asked myself on hearing of the Hayward Gallery’s plan to show the sculptor a second time. (He exhibited there in 1998 and has also had major shows at the Royal Academy and Tate Modern along with numerous Lisson Gallery exhibitions, while his Orbit Tower continues to overlook the Olympic Park in Stratford.)Having just visited the exhibition, though, the answer is a resounding “YES”! I’m still buzzing with delight at Kapoor’s majestic take-over – the show is more like an occupation than an exhibition. On entering, for instance, your way is Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Spielberg’s new close encounter of the third kind asks for faith in humanity and extraterrestrial life which it struggles to earn, his old sense of wonder only fitfully sparking as he argues that, whether contemplating our neighbours or the cosmos, we are not alone.Jaws, Close Encounters and Spielberg’s later Munich all borrowed from the Seventies conspiracy thriller, and Disclosure Day too begins as Daniel (Josh O’Connor) pilfers copious buried alien evidence from the US government’s secret Wardex Corporation, taking startled girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) along on his flight from company boss Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For many years Paul Weller had a conflicted relationship with the oldest parts of his back catalogue. It was rare to hear more than one of his pre-1990 songs in concert. Then he started slipping them in, but only a couple. Tonight, he’s clearly at peace with the whole of his long and varied career, playing seven songs by The Jam and four by the Style Council in a set well over two hours long. It’s a joy to hear these gems scattered with vital precision among the eclectic smorgasbord of what came after.Weller has always been a lean, urgent presence and he remains so. Chewing gum, iron-grey of Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Reader, I confess that I entered the dark space of Pélleas et Mélisande at Snape Maltings with a prior conviction: that, although musicians adore (for the best of reasons) Debussy’s sole completed opera, audiences sometimes simply endure it. However, strongly singers and orchestra (here, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Ryan Wigglesworth) convey this dense-woven tapestry of suffering, foreboding and confinement, the first half especially can make listeners echo Pélleas’s cry down in the airless vaults where Golaud drags him: “I’m suffocating.” Wigglesworth, his wholly committed Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“John Coltrane, he’s a major influence on this record. The instrumental on the A-side is an abstraction of the jazz musician named John Coltrane. That’s C-o-l-t-r-a-n-e.”The Byrds’ David Crosby was spelling it out on 28 March 1966 at a New York press conference called to promote – and explain – his band’s new single “Eight Miles High,” issued nine days earlier. His fellow Byrd Roger McGuinn told journalists that Allen Ginsberg had played them Coltrane: that he “wanted that to come out in our music.” A tape was made of what Ginsberg was urging them to assimilate.
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Sarah Kent
Rambert is celebrating its first 100 years with a triple bill that emphasises the youthful vitality of the company. “We’re 100, and we’re just getting started,” they enthusiastically declare. “The next century starts here.” Like many of the best things in Britain, our first dance company was set up by an immigrant – a Polish woman dedicated both to dancing and promoting others. On leaving Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes where she’d danced with Nijinsky, Marie Rambert came to this country in 1914.As a child she was nicknamed “Quicksilver” because she never stopped moving, and on arrival she Read more ...