Reviews
Heather Neill
Remembering meeting Harley Granville Barker when casting him as Marchbanks in Candida, Shaw described the 23-year-old as, "altogether the most distinguished and incomparably the most cultivated person whom circumstances had driven into the theatre at that time." He judged his performance as the romantic poet "perfect". At just this point in his career, Granville Barker was writing Agnes Colander, subtitled "An Attempt at Life", a typescript of which was only rediscovered a few years ago by two Granville Barker enthusiasts, the American playwright Richard Nelson and the critic Colin Chambers. Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Back in 2017, The Foo Fighters did a surprise pre-Glastonbury gig at Frome’s Cheese & Grain, a rather soulless shed near the equally soulless Westway Shopping Centre. So much for Frome being the heart of a new alternative Britain, almost a parallel universe with the only state-funded Steiner school in the country. The all-purpose venue is better known for programming a string of covers bands, the bi-monthly Vegan Market and the Seed Swap and Potato Day. The place was packed on Sunday night for a gig by Lau, the much-touted avant-folk band from Scotland.Kris Drever (guitar and vocals), Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
As journalists and critics were enjoying the unseasonably balmy weather in Berlin at the 69th Film Festival, all were wondering – where are all the good films? Surely outgoing festival director Dieter Kosslick would want to conclude his 18-year tenure by going out on a bang? Apparently not.Berlin has never had the glitzy attraction of Cannes or the Oscar-hungry titles of Venice and Toronto. Still, journalists and critics have flocked to the German capital each year. This is because Berlin is a festival where you expect to find challenging, demanding, and revitalising cinema. Cinema that gets Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s 1945 and World War Two is nearly over. Somewhere in England, Fiona Symonds (“Feef” to her friends) is training to be a spy and be dropped behind enemy lines. Her training involves such amusements as being woken in the night by having a bucket of water chucked over her, then being interrogated by two fake German officers.But the end of the war in Europe brings Feef’s dreams of covert derring-do to a sudden halt. Wrapped in the arms of her American lover Peter McCormick (Matt Lauria), she wistfully laments that she now won’t be able to parachute into Germany and blow up bridges. Perhaps Read more ...
David Nice
It seems an almost indecent luxury to have heard two top mezzos in just over a week with so much to express, backed up by the perfect technique and instrument with which to do so. Georgian Anita Rachvelishvili with Pappano and the Royal Opera Orchestra the Friday before last only had to hold the spell through a Rachmaninov sequence in the middle of an all-Russian concert. For her long sold-out Wigmore Hall recital, Latvian Elīna Garanča chose a daunting sequence of song series by Schumann, Wagner and Mahler, ending the official programme with other-worldly poise in what sounded exactly as it Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A musicals-intensive season gets off to a wan start with 9 to 5, a retooled West End version of a 2009 Broadway flop based on the beloved 1980 film that proffered a sisterhood for the ages in the combo of Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin. Parton gets bigtime producing billing on a stage venture for which she has provided a so-so (albeit Tony-nominated) score, and her shining face graces the onstage screens to clue us into the none-too-difficult plot and provide a fairly hoary Donald Trump joke. But it's clear pretty much from the start that Jeff Calhoun's production is aiming low and Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Ellida (Pia Tjelta) has a choice to make, the outcome of which will bind her future to her past or her present, each represented by a man. On the one hand, there is the tempestuous seafaring Stranger (Øystein Røger) to whom, long ago and in a fit of delirium, she pledged herself; on the other, there is her devoted and rational doctor husband Wangel (Adrian Rawlins). The consequences of neither option are clear, for while Ellida has lived through both periods, she has hardly been alive in either. Instead, the heroine of Ibsen's 1888 drama is numbed, adrift, and it is only now – under Read more ...
David Nice
British concert audiences now know and love one great Lithuanian, among the most communicative and individual conductors in the world today (note I don't even need to prefix "conductors" with "women"). On Saturday night, Lithuania's Independence Day passing untrumpeted save for a flag-wave or two, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla introduced lucky Birmingham listeners to an ambitious orchestral tone-poem by another, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), the country's national hero among composers. With her customary programming genius, always matched by the playing of what is now "her" City of Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Is there an algorithm for writing this review? There seems to have been one used to create Baptiste, a spin-off from The Missing, and even the staunchest fans of Tchéky Karyo will be struggling not to see the all-too-familiar formula poking through the script. Julien Baptiste is the weary French detective with the hole in his head where a tumour used to be, coaxed out of retirement (just one more time...) by his old flame Marthe (Barbara Sarafian) who just happens to be the Chief of Police. She tells him no-one else has his expertise. We're in Holland (cue dodgy Read more ...
Owen Richards
Compared to Scotland, Welsh independence has yet to hit the mainstream. The idea has been mostly supported by the Welsh-speaking population, with opinion polls hovering around 19 per cent. It’s fallen to Super Furry Animals keyboardist Cian Ciaran to change this with the Yes is More campaign. On Friday night, Cardiff’s Tramshed played host to a mini festival of music, food and discussion, with the aim to engage the public in its political and social future.As line-ups go, it was a hell of a launch event. Mainstream appeal was clearly the target, with self-proclaimed “prosecco socialist/dank Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
This is an astonishing book: in its breadth, depth and detail and also in its almost palpable, and sometimes unpalatable, admiration of its subject, the controversial, long-lived Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012). But if you want to immerse yourself in the course of changing views of history, the newly minted social and contextual narratives of the post-war period, and meet the vast and entertaining spectrum of 20th century academic life among historians, and even encounter the history of the past century, this is it. The intricate personal details of the life of Eric Hobsbawm, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Stravinsky acknowledged that his orchestra for The Rite of Spring was a large one because Diaghilev had promised him extra musicians (“I am not sure that my orchestra would have been as huge otherwise.”) It isn’t huge in Opera North’s production (★★★★★), and for practical reasons they're using the edition arranged by Jonathan McPhee in 1988 for a standard pit band. I expected to be underwhelmed, but, as conducted by Garry Walker, it sounded terrific, most of the sonic thrills emerging unscathed.This staging, a collaboration between Opera North and Leeds’s Phoenix Dance Theatre, marks the UK Read more ...