21st century
Simon Munk
Stunningly good entertainment, interesting art, rubbish game. Beyond: Two Souls does more than any other videogame around to further the cause of interactive narrative fiction – sadly, by jettisoning most of the "interactive" bit.Beyond: Two Souls predecessor is 2010's Heavy Rain. It's probably one of the most important videogames of the last ten years. Ostensibly an update of the old "point-and-click" adventure genre, you play as four characters whose lives cross in a rainy city – your job is to choose dialogue options, solve puzzles and occasionally grapple with action sequences where you Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There's no denying the allure of a well-crafted legal drama, and there's also probably a hefty swathe of fans pining for the return of Maxine Peake in Peter Moffat's superior Grays Inn yarn, Silk. They will have found plenty to cheer in Suranne Jones's thumpingly enjoyable performance as Lila Pettitt in Lawless [****], one of the female-centric pilot shows in Sky Living's new Drama Matters series.Lila has just been appointed the country's youngest-ever female recorder (a judge by any other name), and is pitched head first into the Lewis Carroll-esque maelstrom of life on the bench. Read more ...
Simon Munk
If you think games are for kids, or not art, or beneath you – read on. Grand Theft Auto V, while flawed in many ways, proves you wrong. The latest in the controversial and 18-rated series has already broken first-day sales records for just about every artistic medium ever. Huge numbers of adults across the UK will be sitting down to play it tonight. Take that, Hollywood. Or, Vinewood, as the game would have it.Vinewood as GTA V is set in Los Santos – a virtual replica of Los Angeles and its surroundings. Like its predecessors it's a "freeroaming" or "sandbox" game. There is a spine of plot- Read more ...
kate.bassett
They’re eating out of the palm of his hand. Or so he thinks. Stephen Bellamy is a spin doctor, only 25 years old but already a hotshot in American electioneering. At the off, in Beau Willimon’s fictionalised drama about modern-day Machiavels, Bellamy is presuming to manipulate the press, in Iowa's primary, with hubristic confidence. Two Democratic presidential candidates are going head-to-head. It's Morris versus Pullman and, in order to keep Morris leading in the polls, Bellamy and his boss – the campaign manager, Paul Zara – are about to dish some dirt on Pullman, without any qualms.In Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A lot has changed in the 10 years since Serge Dorny arrived at Lyon Opera. Attendance in a supposedly dying art form has risen to 96 per cent, and no charges of elitism or unfashionable nostalgia have deterred the 25 per cent of Lyon’s audiences who are now under 26 – Europe’s youngest opera-going crowd. But how has Dorny managed this, and at what cost? Is he really the Opera Whisperer or are his innovations just gimmickry, shiny bandages temporarily plugging a fatal wound?It’s a question that UK audiences will soon be able to answer for themselves as Dorny brings his latest and most Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Those who knew the composer Jonathan Harvey, who died of motor neurone disease last December, will remember him as the least demonstrative, least theatrical of men. His presence was gentle, soft-spoken, essentially inward – the physical image of the Buddhism that came to dominate his spiritual consciousness in the latter half of his life. That so intensely pure-minded and modest a musician should have been fascinated by a genius as ostentatious and self-advertising as Wagner is one of those attractions of opposites that are the stuff of art. Whether or not Wagner Dream, Harvey’s final Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Three hundred years ago we danced and ate to art music. Before that we worshipped to it. In the 19th century we began to sit and stare at it. The immersive music movement of the past decade has moved things along again. Today we are encouraged to swim through performances, sniffing the music out, hunting it down. The latest ensemble to free themselves from the sit-and-stare model are the enterprising outfit, the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO). For their concert on Friday we had to go down 200-odd steps into the labyrinths of the disused station at Aldwych. It was well worth the effort. Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Tricky left Massive Attack, the Bristol collective who provided tbe soundtrack to many a shopping therapy expedition, and went on to make one of the greatest albums of the 1990s, Maxinquaye. He was never a purveyor of easy listening or trippy-hoppy background music. He delved much deeper, dredging through a family history of mixed race shenanigans, gangland violence and his own martyrdom as a victim of major respiratory and skin disease.It’s been over 16 years since the first album came out, and Tricky claims he has returned to form with False Idols, after a number of rarely better than Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“There are three rivers in Lyons: the Rhône, the Saône and the Beaujolais.” Thus goes the popular saying – as apt today for France’s gastronomic and wine-quaffing capital as it was back in the 15th century, when the city first became a hub of European political and social life. The cobbled streets, Roman amphitheatres and ubiquitous vistas of Lyons's hillside Old Town draw their share of tourists, while the celebrated bouchons and Michelin-starred restaurants bring in the rest. But what of the city's cultural life?The opera house is the natural hub, rivalling the magnificent Hôtel de Ville Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Sunken Garden is described officially as a “film opera”. Two words. Emphatically unhyphenated. No attempt made to neologise or fashion some third-way genre terminology. It’s not a symbol that bodes well for mutually-informed, sensitive interdisciplinary thinking, but in Michael Van der Aa and David Mitchell’s work English National Opera have come one tiny, shuffling step closer to realising that elusive multimedia idée fixe that has so preoccupied the company under John Berry.First we had the atrocity that was Mike Figgis’s Lucrezia Borgia (soft-core rompings on screen and wooden barkings on Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Unlike the Rai masters Khaled and Mami, who grew up in Algeria and are slightly uncomfortable with the audience-winning slide into rock, Rachid Taha is a beur, a North African born in France, raised on punk but with a thorough knowledge of his heritage: for him, music has always combined partying with political protest, fuelled by the righteous frustration of the second generation immigrant.On stage, Taha is an erratic performer: some of his gigs are magical invocations in which supercharged rock energy meets the complex rhythms of the Maghreb, and the singer darts around the stage displaying Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The thing about puppets, as those who have handled them know all too well, is that they take over. They have a life of their own. This is all fine and good as long as the puppet-masters don’t get swamped by the magical power of supposedly inanimate objects.Much of the fun and originality of Tom Morris’s restlessly inventive take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, made in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company - his co-directors for War Horse - derives from the playfulness that toys encourage in us all. But the astounding array of mechanical inventions, from the simple miniature Read more ...