1920s
David Nice
Virtuosity and a wildly beating heart are compatible in Richard Jones’s finely calibrated production of Renaissance woman Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal. It hits hard as a 1920s mechanical symphony with a lyrical slow movement and words/cliches used like musical refrains. There’s an army of generals at work in the team of 16 actors, led by fearless Rosie Sheehy, and in the genius lighting, movement, sound, design. You rarely see such meticulous, detailed work in the theatre.The polar opposite in scale to Stephen Daldry's 1993 National Theatre production with Fiona Shaw, this one started life in Read more ...
David Nice
Chances are few enough to catch Polish composer Szymanowski’s densely brilliant 1920s score for a ballet about love in the Tatra mountains. Harnasie (Robbers) is so little known that we need a clear line through action and sung text. That all went out of the window in the projections of renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor and visual artist Ben Cullen Williams. It was the final nail in the coffin of an evening where excellent work from Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra was sabotaged at every turn.The beautiful bodies of three dancers from Company Wayne McGregor made a good Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A splendid cast struggle to make something coherent out of Wicked Little Letters, the latest film from Thea Sharrock who not that long ago was one of the hottest theatre directors in town.Sharrock's proven skill onstage with thesps ranging from Benedict Cumberbatch to Kevin Spacey may explain the starry assemblage on view down the line, but no amount of Olivier and Oscar winners - or, in Eileen Atkins, a Dame - can concoct a satisfying whole that often plays like an Alan Bennett caprice run amok: an enquiry into Englishness that trades more than it really needs to in affixing potty-mouthed Read more ...
Anthony Cecil
The Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922, in which tens of thousands of Greeks and Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish soldiers, is a topical subject for our dark times. Unfortunately the intervening century hasn’t put an end to ethnic cleansing or to the plight of refugees.Grigoris Karantinakis’s 2021 costume drama, originally released in Greece as Smyrna My Beloved, seems to be aware of uncomfortable historical parallels. It begins in 2015, Titanic-like, with a nonagenarian survivor rescuing something from the deep. In this case, Filio Williams (Jane Lapotaire), whose grandmother fled to Read more ...
Robert Beale
The opening concert of a new season often tends to be a statement of intent, and this was John Storgårds’ opener of the first full season since he was appointed chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic. He’s hardly a newcomer to them, though, since he has been principal guest conductor (latterly chief guest) for nearly 12 years now. The mutual respect and trust are clear.This programme, however, began with a fanfare and continued with something rich and something rare (not in that order).The fanfare was in Janáček’s Sinfonietta, not unfamiliar as a piece to make an impression with (it’s coming Read more ...
Gary Naylor
There are times when it’s best to know as little as possible before taking one’s seat for a show – this new production of Rebecca would be a perfect such example.It was once talked up as the new Phantom, the next smash hit musical that would do on Broadway in the 2010s what it had done in Europe in the 2000s. Mysterious backers sent emails from dubious addresses, one bearing news of the death of a key investor and, while real sets were built and real actors rehearsed, the money, like the deceased investor, was never real at all. More than a decade on, Rebecca, adapted from the 2006 Read more ...
David Nice
Many of us have perhaps grown too accustomed to the friendly face of My Fair Lady. George Bernard Shaw’s very original play is sharper, less sentimental yet ultimately more profoundly human. Its wit and wisdom zip along in Richard Jones’s symmetrical, perfectly calibrated production, with three astonishing performances and two climactic scenes, one in each half, which respectively make you (me) cry with laughter and bring a tear to the eye at choice moments.This isn’t the Cinderella story of the musical. There’s never any doubt that the huge emotional intelligence, spirit and quick learning Read more ...
graham.rickson
The Saphead gave Buster Keaton his first starring role in a full-length comedy, but 1923’s Three Ages is the first feature film which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in. Two-reelers were a form where he could go, in his words, “wild and crazy”, the more outlandish the visual humour the better.Feature films were based on narrative flow, Keaton later commenting that the jokes “had to be believable or your story wouldn’t hold up.” Watch Our Hospitality or The General and you’ll see what he means. Still, the gags which really stand out in Three Ages are the daft, unbelievable ones: Read more ...
David Nice
If you’re going to be locked in an auditorium with a crazed soldier for over 90 minutes, you need to be overwhelmed by the human frailty and baseness in Büchner’s still-shocking stage play of the late 1830s, the spiderweb beauty of Berg’s 1925 score to match it and a vision in various stage pictures. Director Deborah Warner, conductor Antonio Pappano and set designer Hyemi Shin deliver on all fronts.Though each of Shin’s stunning images is perfectly composed, and so well lit by Adam Silverman, there’s less unity in Warner’s production than there was in, for example, Richard Jones’s Welsh Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Sometimes I go outside and look at our kitchen drain. Where there should be a vortex there’s a largely static pool. Tree roots have recently grown through the old pipes, their clumps colonised with fat, dog hair and coleslaw bits, and though a bit of handpumping will shift some of the stale water for a while, it really needs systemic attention from Dyno-rod. A good Dyno-rodding is what Chichester’s new production of Noel Coward’s The Vortex needs too.The catchline for the staging is that a real-life mother and son play the sex-mad mother and drug-addicted son of the drama, the subtle and Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Isaac Julien was a student at St Martin’s School of Art when the Brixton riots broke out. Black youths took to the streets, frustrated by high rates of unemployment, police harassment, far-right intimidation and media hostility, and all hell was let loose.The following year, 21-year-old Colin Roach was shot at the entrance to Stoke Newington Police Station and this time Julien felt he had to respond. “I was determined,” he said, “to appropriate video art techniques and repurpose them for the street.” Made with Sankofa Film and Video Collective, Who Killed Colin Roach?, 1983 records the Read more ...
David Nice
Is Korngold a second-rank composer with some first-rate ideas? Most performances of the 23-year-old Viennese prodigy's Die tote Stadt make it seem so. Nearly smothered in glitter and craft, the story can compel – an oblique, promising stance on Georges Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-morte, about an obsessive widower who thinks he sees his dead wife in a vivacious dancer. Does Annilese Miskimmon, ENO's semi-visible Artistic Director, carry it off?For much of the time, yes. Her collaboration with the best of set designers Miriam Buether and lighing by James Farncombe is especially successful when Read more ...