Reviews
James Saynor
The Refugee Movie is rapidly becoming a genre unto itself, with elements of suspense and humanism woven together into something that’s very properly cinematic.Films like Io Capitano and Green Border, tracking the tragic migrant trail to and through Europe, prick consciences and sweat palms in equal measure, but those two fine examples from last year were made by European directors on helicopter missions, as it were, to raise consciousness and to mine fresh seams of character.To a Land Unknown is a story of Palestinian refugees actually made by a Palestinian, Mahdi Fleifel, and it’s an Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwrights who work for decades often acquire a moniker. In the case of Howard Brenton, who began his career as a left-winger in the turbulent 1970s, the name is The History Man. Over the past decade, or so, he has written brilliantly about historical figures such as, among others, Anne Boleyn, Charles I, Lawrence of Arabia – and many more.Now it’s the turn of Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, two titans of the allied side in the second world war. Churchill in Moscow reunites Brenton with Tom Littler, the successful artistic director of the Orange Tree Theatre in their sixth Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Bridget Jones has grown up: v.v.g. Our heroine is still prone to daft pratfalls and gaffes and bursts of sensational idiot dancing. But passing time has lent her an enhanced self-awareness that has nothing to do with calories consumed. This Bridget can bring the pinprick of tears to the eyes as well as make you laugh.The first generation of Bridget fans, like her creator Helen Fielding, are now in their sixties and beyond, and possibly experiencing, like Bridget (and Fielding), the loss of a partner through divorce or death. Bridget’s beloved Mark Darcy (Colin Firth, pictured below with Read more ...
David Nice
So the Royal Opera had assembled a dream cast, conductor (Edward Gardner) and director (Richard Jones). The only question until last night was whether composer Mark-Anthony Turnage would be at his remarkable best. His operatic journey has been uneven, but one thing is now certain: adapting the first Dogme 95 movie, Festen by Thomas Vinterberg, so shocking at a time (1998) when the issue of child abuse rarely surfaced in drama, has yielded music theatre of flawless pace and range.No-one should expect a faithful reflection of the film (which I haven't seen since its release knocked me for six Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The exhortations don’t seem necessary as the audience is already letting off the steam which has built up in anticipation of a full-bore show. Nonetheless, The Courettes’ Flávia Couri knows higher levels of excitement are there to be tapped, that it’s possible to get the crowd to liberate themselves from any restraint they may have left. Limits are there to be pushed.She calls out. They respond. She sings. They sing along. She gestures, beckoning for more. They howl. It’s not enough though. Then, boom. She’s off the stage, burrowing through onlookers and on the bar, holding-up her guitar to Read more ...
David Nice
For all its passing British sea shanties and folksongs, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony does Walt Whitman’s determinedly global-oriented poetry full justice. That “pennant universal” was reflected in two superlative soloists from South Africa and the USA, our national treasure of an Anglo-Italian conductor, an Argentinian chorus director and a raft of international names in chorus and orchestra who just happen to be UK citizens.Only one aspect wasn’t big enough for this epic journey – the Barbican Hall itself. A Sea Symphony needs space above and around it: that you get in spades at the Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Bowling For Soup are celebrating their iconic album, A Hangover You Don’t Deserve, on a fun-filled, energetic tour for its 20th anniversary. Their sold out stop at Wolverhampton’s Civic Hall was a joy to experience from start to finish, the light-hearted essence of the band evident from the minute we walked in. From comical merch to on-stage banter, the fun was infectious and made for a special evening executed by clear well-seasoned professionals. DJ Jon Mahon rallied the waiting crowd in the name of 2000s emo music, ramping up the excitement with his energy and perfect song choices. Read more ...
Jon Turney
Working on materials was basic to human culture from the start: chipping at flint to make a hand-axe; fashioning bone or wood; drying hides. In time, people discovered that some materials, especially when put to trial by fire, were special: harder, shinier, more attractive, or more deadly.Philip Marsden is interested in those materials, yes, but especially in the now-buried traces of their excavation. And his latest book – Under a Metal Sky: A Journey Through Minerals, Greed and Wonder – is interestingly difficult to characterise. It’s a blend (an alloy?) of geology, archaeology, Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical book Les Années charts a woman’s life across time and space, history and memory, through what the author describes as a collective consciousness. Perhaps the most satisfying thing about Eline Arbo’s superb adaptation is that it projects this idea through, fittingly, one of the most truly collective performances London has seen in years. More than that, the communal embrace extends to the audience, in ways that are not always comfortable – the life portrayed, from 1941 to 2006, has its share of hardship – but add to the play’s resonance and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“I really am the repository for all your shit,” Nina Conti’s famous Monkey hand puppet tells her. Monkey may have a point.The brilliance of Conti’s ventriloquism is that it seems to burst, unedited, from her id. Filth, surrealism and lightning-fast gags spume in a torrent whenever her teeth are closed tight. Her non-puppet stage persona is, by contrast, all light and loveliness, apparently bemused by what’s being dredged up. Quite apart from how she has the Brighton Dome in stitches, watched purely on the level of technical skill and psychological tightrope walking, her shows are astonishing Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper of this enjoyably esoteric evening. Dutch cellist Hadewych van Gent began the pianissimo movement of Vasks’ Gramata Cellam by creating a build-up of whistling harmonic effects on the A string, followed by a yearning feather-light improvisation in the cello’s upper registers that suddenly plunged vertiginously bass-wards.The rich, velvety chordal sequence that ensued was accompanied by Gent’s wordless soprano, as clear and piercing as a shaft of light Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Greek myths are all over theatre stages at the moment, their fierce, vengeful stories offering unnerving parallels with events in our modern world. The latest such project is a pithy double bill of opera and dance, both halves (though the first lasts only 20 minutes) featuring the half-man, half-bull Minotaur, and the havoc he wreaks, even in death.Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra – a work he called a cantata but which is more like sung psychodrama – uses the poet Robert Lowell’s translation of Racine’s Phèdre to explore the fallout from the character’s disastrous sexual journey. Marrying the Read more ...