Reviews
Veronica Lee
Damned (★★★) is the third comedy drama in what could be termed Jo Brand's social/healthcare triptych (after Getting On, set in a geriatric hospital ward, and Going Forward, in which she appeared as a care-home worker). Damned, in which she also stars, is set in a child protection social services unit.Co-created with Morwenna Banks (who appears as co-worker Ingrid), Damned follows in the tracks of Getting On and Going Forward by being low-key, dark-humoured and full of throwaway lines, but - on the evidence of last-night's opening episode (of six), has yet to reach the former's superb heights Read more ...
Glyn Môn Hughes
The new season at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is focusing on revolutionaries. Bach, Beethoven and Berlioz all feature strongly over the next few months, as will Stravinsky and – where else but Liverpool? – The Beatles.The RLPO has another reason to celebrate, too. It’s 10 years since Vasily Petrenko took up the baton as chief conductor of the orchestra and much has changed in that decade, not least the edgily confident way in which Petrenko and the RLPO explore the repertoire. The start of the 11th season with Petrenko at the helm presented audiences with something of a marathon: all Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Given the fractious state of American politics, perhaps it's a suitable moment for a movie taking a look back at the American Civil War. However, despite heaving at the seams with good intentions and noble sentiments, Gary Ross's Free State of Jones ultimately can't justify its debilitating 140-minute running time.It's based on the real-life story of Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), a Mississippi farmer who turned deserter and ended up declaring his own independent mini-state, one peopled by runaway slaves and former soldiers sickened by the Civil War carnage and the rapacious martial law Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The indefatigable Victorian spinster Marianne North (1830-1890) is the most interesting artist you've never heard of. The upper-middle-class Ms North thought marriage a terrible experiment, and with her single state allowing her control of her fortune, she took to cultural and physical independence. Her rich landowner father, Frederick, MP for Hastings, knew everyone who was everyone, including Sir William Hooker, director of Kew. It was a visit to the gardens that turned his daughter’s eyes to the world of plants. She was 25 and had found her vocation. Marianne deserted the drawing room Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This year, Valery Gergiev is marking the Prokofiev 125th anniversary with concerts and projects in no fewer than 17 countries. Yet much of last night’s concert, the first of a three-night stint in London, made this whole endeavour feel more like a duty than either an imperative – or a pleasure. The buzz that was around in London concerning the Mariinsky (then the Kirov) in the mid-Nineties, when they dazzled audiences in unfamiliar repertoire, has long gone. Gergiev himself is now very familiar indeed: he'll be popping back here within two months to conduct Prokofiev again, with the LSO Read more ...
David Nice
Stravinsky's music, chameleonic yet always itself, offers so many lines of thought. One struck me immediately with the descending, even harp notes and tender, veiled strings at the start of his 1947 ballet Orpheus last night: the inexorable beat of time is so often pitted against an expressive, human voice. Esa-Pekka Salonen, who started out as a rhythm and textures man, now gets the humanity too. This triptych of three Greek myths startlingly revisited offered other dualities, giving him and the Philharmonia the chance to move constantly between heaven, hell and somewhere in between.It’s the Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Sandy Smith’s brass band transcription of Tubular Bells is an improbable triumph. He draws heavily on composer David Bedford’s 1970s orchestral arrangement, along with Mike Oldfield’s two recorded versions. Musically the work holds up very well. But the original 1973 LP sounds distinctly murky in places: this was a live performance in which every strand was audible.These musicians ably demonstrate just how different a brass band sounds to an orchestral brass section: cornets, euphoniums and tenor horns subtly warmer, less abrasive than trumpets and French horns. Ear plugs were on offer to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Five nominations for the Edinburgh Comedy Award are surely a recommendation for James Acaster – and with his intelligent, offbeat humour and a wry delivery, he has rightly built up an impressive following at the Fringe (where I saw this show), having improved his craft year on year. Now he embarks on his biggest tour yet and is certain to add to his rapidly growing fanbase.His latest show, Reset, is a gem, a beautifully crafted and performed essay about having one's time again. In Acaster's very individual take on the subject, it could mean him going into the witness protection programme, or Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1985, John Foxx released In Mysterious Ways: his fourth solo album since leaving Ultravox in 1979. In 1980, he had charted with “Underpass”, his first solo single. Subsequently, he charted a path where frosty, anomie-filled electropop gave way to the warmth of “Europe After the Rain” and the Beatles-inspired psychedelia of “Endlessly”. The 1983 album The Golden Section was his most straightforwardly poppy to date. Then, the patchy In Mysterious Ways and musical silence.In 1997, he re-emerged with two albums, Cathedral Oceans and Shifting City (made with Louis Gordon). From this point, Read more ...
David Kettle
It’s just a short trip down the A1 from Edinburgh. But East Lothian – with its big skies, wide-open spaces, empty beaches and seemingly inexhaustable supply of quaint, historic villages – feels like a long, long way from the Scottish capital. Especially from the heaving, hectic Edinburgh of the August festivals season – which East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival follows by just a couple of weeks, managing to maintain the momentum of artistic endeavour, but also providing a far more reflective, considered antidote.The East Lothian festival takes its name from the surprisingly wild Lammermuir Read more ...
Russ Coffey
A single guitar note rang out over smouldering synth-chords. It was bent up a tone and then wavered in the air before gracefully falling. And so began the final residency of the Rattle That Lock tour. No hype. No support act. Just David Gilmour and his all-star band looking back on his long and prestigious career. At least that's how the programme described it. For everyone else this was Pink Floyd resurrected.Not the Nineties "stadium version", mind. This was more like early Floyd - a time when the band members were still totally immersed in the possibilities of making Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Gorgeous, sumptuous, thrilling: here comes Abstract Expressionism riding into town, the first major overview in London since its own contemporary heyday in the 1950s. A clunky, unappealing label for such fabulously appealing stuff, it's best just to relax and enjoy this total immersion, for colour and gesture can never have been combined to such memorable effect. Nurtured by the melting pot of New York, this was the first homegrown group of American artists, its activities destined to put New York on the international culture map, wresting the crown of art capital from Paris.The diversity of Read more ...