1950s
Adam Sweeting
"There is no murder in paradise" is the official line of the authorities in 1950s Russia, but nevertheless Child 44 is the blood-drenched tale of a hunt for a mass-murdering paedophile in Stalin's deathly shadow. The source novel was the first in Tom Rob Smith's trilogy about Russia during and after the Great Dictator, and Smith based it on the real-life killer Andrei Chikatilo, the "Rostov Ripper".Director Daniel Espinosa has done a powerful job of rendering the misery and horror of the USSR in the early 1950s, where your best friend or the work-mate at the next desk may be an informer for Read more ...
David Nice
Vaudeville is alive and well in the silvered Lilliputian cave which might have been made for it (not that Victorian Savoyards could have had any inkling). If you find yourself, like last night’s showbiz audience, beguiled to cheering point by the shreds-and-patches routines put together by the ultimate theatrical whirlwind, Mamma Rose, that’s because everything in this London transfer from the Chichester Festival Theatre, parody included, is solid gold. Heck, I’d even have paid to hear the first trumpet in the fabulous wind-and-brass orchestra tune up.Then, of course, there’s Imelda Staunton Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Retrospectively, two things help The Blob stand apart from the glut of late-Fifties aliens-invade-small-town-America science fiction films. It gave Steve McQueen his first starring role and its theme tune was an early Burt Bacharach co-write. Either of these – or even both together – are probably not enough to make the 1958 regional independent production into a classic piece of American cinema. But it is pretty good.Somewhere in Pennsylvania a courting couple – the male half of which is McQueen, playing “Steve” – are smooching in an open-top car. Coming back from their close encounter they Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Your mum told you (or at least, I hope someone did) that it wasn't about being pretty, it was about having personality. True wisdom though this is, you probably also noticed that there are some jobs where it appears to be necessary to conform to a certain model of style or appearance. Playing the princess roles in ballet is one of these, though it's not about prettiness: for practical reasons you have to be shorter and considerably lighter than the men who will partner you. Tall ballerinas do become principals, but, especially in smaller companies, they don't often get to dance the Auroras Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Nowadays, playwrights do their apprenticeships at university, studying drama. But, once upon a time, they had proper jobs before they started making theatre. Such is the case of the late Michael Hastings, who died in 2011 and whose most famous piece is Tom & Viv (about TS Eliot and his wife). Before becoming a playwright, he worked for three years as a tailor's apprentice. The Cutting of the Cloth, written in 1973 and accumulating dust in a bottom drawer ever since, is based on those early work experiences. But is it worth staging?This is a wintry play for a cold nightThe story is set in Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
There is indeed something of Frankenstein’s monster about the handsome young gardener, with his flat-top haircut and gym-bulked torso, who has come to mow James Whale’s lawn. The retired Hollywood director, now plagued by a series of strokes, is pathologically alert to remembrances of his earlier life, and it’s Whale’s state of mind, rather than the game-changing films he made in 1930s Hollywood (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Man in the Iron Mask), that forms the locus of Russell Labey’s new play.The material comes from a speculative novel by Christopher Bram, which in turn Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The Christmas scoop was the first appearance of the authorial voice, Vanessa Redgrave, playing Jennifer Worth, writing Christmas cards, looking at the photographs of herself with her two midwife friends and plunging us into memory from 2005 to 1959. She tells her husband Philip (Ronald Pickup) with tender affection how different it was, but "once a nurse, always a nurse," he responds. Bookending this episode were her words as she and Philip finished Christmas preparations, that if we are lucky we find love, and even its meaning. Philip then persuades Jennifer to write her memoirs, and the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This newly-restored version of one of MGM's most hallowed musicals is making the seasonal rounds with a run at the BFI and selected cinemas around the country. Directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz in 1955, the piece drips with period charm, while its pairing of Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra is still capable of generating a box office buzz 60 years later. But (I'll just whisper this) it may seem like a bit of a slog for modern audiences.It's not just the 150-minute duration that sometimes makes time feel like it's been nailed to the floorboards, or the jarring quaintness of the Damon Runyon- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With just over two weeks to Christmas, thoughts might be turning to which of the deluge of 2014’s reissues might be suitable as a gift, worth putting on your own wish-list for Santa or even merit buying for yourself. So if help is needed, theartsdesk is happy to provide a one-stop guide to the essential reissues covered so far this year.Normal service will resume next week with a look at John Grant’s old band The Czars. The week after we will consider Millions Like Us, a box set dedicated to, as it is helpfully subtitled, “the Mod Revival 1977–89”. Following that will be a collection Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Hong Kong master Wong Kar Wai has ventured into new territory with The Grandmaster. Many years in the making, his new film is a remarkable portrayal of martial-arts traditions, specifically the story of kung fu master Ip Man from his early life in mainland China on the eve of World War II, through to post-war exile in Hong Kong. It was there that he set up his own Wing Chun school, which would with time achieve huge international popularity; Ip went on to train future kung fu stars, most notably Bruce Lee.Fans of the heightened aesthetics of Wong’s early arthouse masterpieces like 2000’s In Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Reclaiming lost plays can be unnecessary indulgence, but Blanche McIntyre’s note-perfect production of Emlyn Williams’ 64-year-old work ushers in the renaissance of a thoroughly modern masterpiece. This progressive examination of ethical relativism, trial by media and the tension between public and private life is so topical as to seem positively clairvoyant, but it’s not just a play of ideas – Accolade is among the year’s most riveting human dramas.Nobel Prize-winning author and respected family man Will Trenting (Alexander Hanson, pictured below with Bruce Alexander), about to add Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The key lines are “you’re reborn into an untroubled world” – a world “where everyone’s the same.” The 1956 Don Siegel science fiction film Invasion of the Body Snatchers is often taken as a response to America’s fear of Communism and the associated suppression of self, or as a commentary on the encroaching conformity brought by the spread of consumerism and a regimented suburbia. In both cases, homogenisation and standardised behaviour were the potential result.Seeing the film anew does nothing to alter these interpretations. In cinemas again as part of the BFI’s Days of Fear and Wonder Read more ...