Reviews
alexandra.coghlan
And so it comes to an end. Six months, 33 concerts, and many miles of travelling later, The Sixteen’s annual Choral Pilgrimage is now finished for another year. With so many concerts it’s inevitable that the singers’ relationship to the repertoire evolves and develops; the performances we heard last night will not have been those the audience at St John’s College, Cambridge experienced back in April. So what is the effect of living so intimately with this small handful of works?The 2016 Pilgrimage pairs music by William Byrd with that of Arvo Pärt – two composers separated by over four Read more ...
Barney Harsent
So we’re less than a week away from America’s choice. Many in the States have presented it as a kind of Sophie’s Choice – an unbearable outcome no matter who they choose. On the one hand they have a racist, sexist, braggart bully who has been named in at least 169 federal lawsuits and is due to appear in court over allegations of child rape, while on the other, they have a professional politician who can’t use email properly. It must be agonising for them.In The Conspiracy Files: The Trump Dossier, programme makers attempted to highlight how "The Donald" has managed to make a choice as stark Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Terry Johnson's Dead Funny debuted at the same theatre in the West End in 1994 (after opening at Hampstead), and its starting point is the real events of April 1992 when two funnymen, Frankie Howerd and Benny Hill, died in the same week. It was a bizarre coincidence from which he fashioned a very funny play – which he now expertly directs in this welcome revival – about the Dead Funny Society, a collection of suburban oddballs who meet to celebrate their comedy heroes.But underneath the laughter there is pain. Eleanor (Katherine Parkinson) yearns to be a mother, but husband Richard (Rufus Read more ...
edward.seckerson
From Monteverdi to Schubert to Bernstein and Lloyd Webber the dramatic song cycle has travelled far and wide over the centuries, though not until Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years in opposite directions. His two-handed tour-de-force – first seen Off Broadway in 2002 – shadows Cathy (Samantha Barks, who was Eponine in the film of Les Mis) and Jamie (Jonathan Bailey) as they find and lose each other at a time when both are seeking recognition in their creative lives.He is a writer, she an actress; his timeline moves forwards, hers backwards. They meet only once. But as one moves Read more ...
Alison Cole
David Bowie needs no introduction, yet he kept one aspect of his life largely hidden away: his art collecting. Now Sotheby’s, which is auctioning off around 400 items of his private art collection in a three-part sale on 10 and 11 November, is holding a very special exhibition, lasting just 10 days. The exhibition and the extensive catalogues that accompany the sale provide an exceptional opportunity to see the works together before they are dispersed and to look at how much the collection reflects the man (and sometimes his music).As you would expect from someone of Bowie’s range of burning Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You could begin to wonder if The Accountant is part of a game of one-upmanship between Ben Affleck and his old buddy Matt Damon. If Matt can strike it big with Jason Bourne, the amnesiac super-lethal assassin, Ben can go one better – Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant and super-lethal assassin! That this movie is as enjoyable as it is is down to Affleck going beyond being merely strong and silent into an understatement almost as stylised and codified as Noh theatre. He lets slip sly one-liners as barely audible afterthoughts ("sorry," he murmurs, after interrupting an ongoing Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Cats on film. There are plenty of them. Elsewhere on the web you will find loads of listicles featuring top cats, boss pussies, big mogs, killer kitties, whiskers galore and other such. Cats get their biggest billing of all in the wonderful if anthropomorphic world of Walt Disney. It’s rare for a cat to be played by a cat in a film about a cat. Cat people will be purring, therefore, at A Street Cat Named Bob.It tells the true touching story of James Bowen, a down-and-out heroin-addicted busker whose life was given shape and meaning when a ginger tom clambered through a window of his supported Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Who is the fool in Sam Shepard’s 1983 chamber play Fool for Love? Is it Eddie, the rodeo stuntman who repeatedly cheats on his girl? Is it May, the girl who keeps taking him back? Or is it the Old Man, whose philosophy of rolling-stone fatherhood fails to take account of the damaged lives?You emerge from Simon Evans’ production, his third and last at the atmospheric West End pop-up Found111, wondering whether Shepard might not be taking the audience for fools too. So you thought love was simple, he mocks. You thought love was a wholesome thing that sets people straight. Well, get this.The Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Got Soul! Honeybelles! Mums in Durham! Three shortlisted finalists from the north and Scotland. Along the way we – and Gareth Malone – were sung to by the Mancunian Rhythm of Life, not to mention Too Many Cooks in Inverness, and a septuagenarian all-male group from Malton kept in order by a retired schoolmistress, who had evolved into a disciplined conductor – and had a fit of the giggles when faced with Mr Malone.Hundreds of choirs involving thousands of people applied to be considered by the choirmaster of the nation for the Best in Britain. Our Gareth is subject in the programme to scores Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Composer Henry Krieger’s highly anticipated Dreamgirls arrives later this month, but first up is the UK premiere of his less well-known but thoroughly likeable Side Show, based on the real story of a pair of conjoined twins who became 1930s American vaudeville stars.Daisy and Violet Hilton have spent their lives on display, from the abusive midwife who charged punters to peer at them in the back room of a pub to the autocratic guardian who makes them the star attraction in his travelling sideshow. Now, they’re seeking autonomy, but disagree on the form that should take: Daisy wants fame and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Having served her time as dutiful, self-effacing Anna Bates in Downton Abbey, here's Joanne Froggatt grasping with both hands the role of Mary Ann Cotton, "Britain's first female serial killer". No more wearing herself out desperately trying to save Mr Bates from the gallows. This time she's turning the tables, and making sure useless men aren't going to hold her back any longer. After a short prologue in which our anti-heroine was preparing to meet her maker, we joined her as she returned to her mother and stepfather's pub in Seaham, County Durham in 1857. She had eloped to Cornwall Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander fell in love in real life while making The Light Between Oceans, which lends an extra dimension to a morose period weepie that needs every bit of excitement it can get. Reminiscent of the laboured celluloid romances of a bygone era that could once have starred Robert Taylor, the film is as vacuous as it is pretty, and if director Derek Cianfrance cut some of his stars' lingering glances, it would have the added virtue of being short.As it is, 132 minutes is a long time for a movie whose narrative more or less demands that the audience is several steps Read more ...