America
marcus.odair
“Wynton Marsalis has had an enormous impact on jazz over the last 40 years,” say the programme notes, “being one of the first artists to perform and compose across the full jazz spectrum from its New Orleans roots to bebop to modern jazz.” Although it seems to bestow an extra precociousness upon the American trumpeter, who was only born in 1961, the first part of that sentence is undoubtedly true. The second part is true too, until the last two words. The one thing Wynton Marsalis does not do is modern jazz.That was clear in his set tonight, blues-indebted and swinging – or, occasionally, Read more ...
Russ Coffey
These days Teddy Thompson seems entirely his own man. In fact, mentioning his family connections seems almost gratuitous. Last night, however, the son of Richard and Linda shared the evening with sister Kami and nephew Zak for a family knees-up before a devoted crowd. And, for the most part, they all seemed to be having a thoroughly good time. Opening up proceedings was Kami, who took to the stage casually in a white blouse and black pants as if she'd finished a day working in a local office. Kamila Thompson's set of bittersweet observational folk-rock came mainly from her Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The talented Mr Jude Law is back on stage in what must be the hottest ticket in the West End. Although not everyone warmed to his 2009 Hamlet, the mere presence in central London of one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars is enough to bring a touch of sunshine to a wintry summer. My main anxiety was that, as a reaction to the riots sweeping the capital, the Government would call a curfew and close the show, which was due to open last night. I needn’t have worried. It opened on schedule.And Law doesn’t disappoint. He has a real talent to surprise: here, he inhabits the bearded, brawny body of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bruce Springsteen and Krautrock might not seem obvious kin, but the second album from Philadelphia’s The War on Drugs brings them together. It’s not clear what’s coming as Slave Ambient opens, but this is a dizzying, audacious and supremely confident journey that marries the seemingly disparate.There is a precedent though. Finland’s intense and stellar post-Spacemen 3 trio Joensuu 1685 made Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” their own, turning it into a slab of Neu/La Dusseldorf white-light intensity. The War on Drugs's main man Adam Granduciel is probably unaware of these Suomi shamen, and it’s Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"Drop that long face," we're urged during the end of the giddy Regent's Park revival of Crazy For You, and if ever there were a time for such sentiments, it came during the lockdown that London remained under during the all too aptly cloud-filled evening that saw the Open Air Theatre not quite full. Nor was it lost on many spectators that the glorious George and Ira Gershwin score was giddily filling a night air punctuated at regular intervals by the distant (or maybe not) sound of sirens.But Timothy Sheader's production exerts its own siren song that functions as an escapist tonic Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas, usually comes to mind in association with hometown boy Bill Clinton. Soul and funk fans, however, aren’t fussed with the sax-playing former governor and president and fixate on the city’s True Soul label, the home of a raft of rare and sought-after sides. Two volumes compiling the imprint have just been issued and include previously unissued tracks. The harmony-driven soul, Southern grooves and tight funk make a case for True Soul being an essential component of soul USA.Musically, Bill C’s sax was in keeping with Little Rock’s limited musical Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Rebecca Gilman is an American playwright who once made a big splash in London. After having work such as The Glory of Living, Spinning into Butter, Boy Gets Girl and The Sweetest Swing in Baseball staged at the Royal Court Theatre in the first five years of the new millennium, she then disappeared from view. Now she’s back in the capital with a 2001 play, whose UK premiere opened last night and which takes a peek at some close relationships between cops and hookers in a small Midwest town.Somewhere along Route 29 is a little whorehouse called Naughty But Nice. Two of the teens working there, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Having masterminded the existential fantasy of Lost, reinvented Star Trek and served up the monster-on-the-loose rampage of Cloverfield, JJ Abrams now comes trampling all over Steven Spielberg's favourite turf of homely, nostalgic American suburbia. He can feel Spielberg's benign hand resting on his shoulder though, since the Big 'berg co-produced and brought aboard several of his favourite sound and visual effects specialists.Plot-wise, it's the summer of 1979 - we know this from an introductory blast of ELO's "Don't Bring me Down" - and we're in the small town of Killian, Ohio, where many Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Having masterminded the existential fantasy of Lost, reinvented Star Trek and served up the monster-on-the-loose rampage of Cloverfield, JJ Abrams now comes trampling all over Steven Spielberg's favourite turf of a homely, nostalgic America. He can feel Spielberg's benign hand resting on his shoulder though, since the Big 'Berg co-produced and brought aboard several of his favourite sound and visual effects specialists.Plot-wise, it's the summer of 1979 - we know this from an introductory blast of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down" - and we're in the small town of Killian, Ohio, where many of the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Already shouldering the new Harry Potter off the top of the US box-office charts, this latest arrival from Marvel Studios harks back to a simpler America where the hero wraps himself in the stars and stripes and the bad guys speak with ridiculous German accents. It’s 1941, the Nazis are trampling Western civilisation underfoot, and gung-ho American kids are flocking to join up.But it’s bad news for 98lb weakling Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a rickety, asthmatic youth from Brooklyn who’s desperate to pull on an army uniform and head for war-torn Europe, but hasn’t a hope of passing a medical Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Death means learning to say "I love you" in the woozy world of Ghost, the 1990 film that has become a breathlessly vapid musical sure to keep hen parties happy for some while to come (especially now that Dirty Dancing has closed and Flashdance barely got going). The material is cheesy, often defiantly so, and it's here been polished to a high sheen by the director Matthew Warchus and a design team who pull out all the stops in order to snap to attention even the most ADD-afflicted in the house.One's individual taste for such fare may depend on individual tolerance for a piece that begins with Read more ...
Russ Coffey
His daughter may be Hannah Montana and he may have set country music sales records but, worldwide, Billy Ray Cyrus will never escape his mega-hit “Achy Breaky Heart”. Although that was a novelty record, it epitomised everything people find preposterous about America’s red states. Which is why, outside of America’s heartlands, most people find it difficult to take Cyrus seriously. It's something he finds very frustrating.I’m American is Cyrus’s “patriot” album. It’s all about troops and home and stars and stripes. It’s full of girls left behind, and parents’ war records. Just the sort of Read more ...