2010s
Skeleton Crew, Donmar Warehouse review - slow burn that satisfyingly catches fireTuesday, 09 July 2024For a long stretch of its first half, Dominique Morrisseau’s 2016 award-winner, Skeleton Crew, seems a conventional workplace drama, though in a much gentler key than Lynn Nottage’s Sweat. But this slow burn catches fire.The first sign that... Read more... |
£1 Thursdays, Finborough Theatre review - dazzling new play is as funny and smart as its two heroinesMonday, 04 December 2023It’s 2012 and the London Olympics might as well be happening on the Moon for Jen and Stacey. In fact, you could say the same for everyone else scrabbling a living in Bradford – or anywhere north of Watford – and we know what those left-behind places... Read more... |
Prom 43: Endgame, BBC Scottish SO, Ryan Wigglesworth review - beautiful sounds but slow, slow dramaFriday, 18 August 2023György Kurtág is 97 and the last man standing of the post-war generation of avant-garde composers. Last night the Proms staged the UK premiere of his first opera, started in his eighties and premiered in 2018, a setting of Samuel Beckett’s typically... Read more... |
La Syndicaliste review - a star outshines her conspiracy thriller scriptThursday, 29 June 2023On the face of it, La Syndicaliste (aka The Sitting Duck) is a conspiracy thriller that runs along familiar tracks: clever woman begins to suspect dirty dealings at a very high level in the high-stakes industry she works for and lands herself in a... Read more... |
Album: Django Django - Off Planet: Parts 1 - 4Wednesday, 14 June 2023Brit alt-indie outfit Django Django refuse easy categorisation and, as a result, during a decade-plus career, have never quite found their place with the wider public. Critical acclaim has come their way, and those who’ve kept an ear open know their... Read more... |
It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure, Soho Theatre review - disability-led comedy hits hardMonday, 01 May 2023Just when you’ve relaxed a little, privilege duly checked and confident that you won’t be guilt-tripped for nipping into that disabled loo a few years ago at the National (c’mon, the interval was nearly over and needs must), FlawBored drop a bomb... Read more... |
Album: The Zombies - Different GameThursday, 30 March 2023There’s something charmingly unassuming and humble about The Zombies. Nowadays their 1968 second album Odyssey and Oracle regularly figures in all time greatest albums lists, but it was a flop at the time and its reputation grew through a gradually... Read more... |
Standing at the Sky's Edge, National Theatre review - razor-sharp musical with second-act woesTuesday, 21 February 2023Buildings can hold memories, the three dimensions of space supplemented by the fourth of time. Ten years ago, I started every working week with a meeting in a room that, for decades, had been used to conduct autopsies – I felt a little chill... Read more... |
Smoke, Southwark Playhouse review - dazzling Strindberg updateMonday, 06 February 2023A play’s title can be an almost arbitrary matter – there’s no streetcar but plenty of desire in that one for example – and it might have crossed Kim Davies’ mind to call her play Ms Julie, since it is a reimagining of August Strindberg’s... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Guerrilla Girlsǃ - She-Punks & Beyond 1975-2016Sunday, 01 January 2023In December 1977, the music weekly Sounds included an article about the County Durham punk band Penetration. By Jon Savage, it was headlined The Future Is Female. The same four words would be used by the band for their promotional badges.Penetration... Read more... |
Hewitt, Hallé, Schuldt, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - lightening the gloomFriday, 25 November 2022If there was a certain doom-laden dimension to Clemens Schuldt’s Bridgewater Hall programme with the Hallé ( … Requiem … Mozart in D minor … Strauss describing Death and …), it was easily lightened by the conductor’s own approach and personality.... Read more... |
Clutch, Bush Theatre review - new comedy-drama passes its testThursday, 22 September 2022Max is big and black and Tyler is slight and (very) white, an odd couple trapped in a dual-control car as Max barks out his instructions and Tyler prepares for his driving test. If their relationship is to get started, like the clutch of the... Read more... |
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