America
Matt Wolf
Of all the groups you probably wouldn’t want to be part of, surely the hyper-adrenalised, hardscrabble populace of The Wolf of Wall Street, the Jordan Belfort memoir made into an amphetamine rush of a film by Martin Scorsese, must rank near the very top. And yet here, against expectation, is an immersive theatre adaptation of the non-fiction memoirs that spawned the 2013 movie. What’s more, it is being staged in a capacious address located a coke-fuelled trot away from London’s City equivalent of the do-or-die New York milieu from which Belfort has since emerged post-imprisonment as some Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Nostalgia for things that probably never were is an animating theme in politics these days. Much the same feeling displaced to the realm of showbiz, lends a vaguely dampening air to White Christmas, this latest stage retread of the 1954 Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye film that its beloved more for its songs, really, than for any inherent durability.The Dominion hosted a colourless iteration of this very title five years ago, with Aled Jones and Tom Chambers in the bromance-heavy central roles. The current upgrade of the material benefits from an altogether more appealing cast, headed by Danny Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The first series of The Sinner in 2017 starred Jessica Biel as a disturbed woman who seemingly inexplicably stabbed a man to death on a beach, then could remember nothing about the crime. This second season on BBC Four finds Biel on board as executive producer, but this time the story is of a young boy who seemingly inexplicably poisons a couple, and admits to doing it.The common thread is detective Harry Ambrose, who’s called in to help out on the new case by Heather Novack (Natalie Paul), the daughter of Harry’s old police buddy Jack Novack (Tracy Letts). Last time around we saw Harry Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Some two million Americans are currently in prison in America. A disproportionate number are black and nearly 200,000 are estimated to be innocent. John Grisham’s quietly horrifying new novel is a damning indictment of the inequities and corruption of the American legal system, which is shown to be not only corrupt but also profoundly inefficient and adept at making victims of those it incarcerates.Over two decades before the story begins, in the small Florida town of Seabrook, a young white lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead while working alone at his desk late into the night. There were Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Ken Burns is the closest American television has to David Attenborough. They may swim in different seas, but they both have an old-school commitment to an ethos that will be missed when it’s gone – the idea that television is a place to communicate information with a sober sense of wonder. Burns’s field is American history in all its breadth and depth. Last time round it was a lapidary decalogue of documentaries about the Vietnam War. That had such an impact that, for his latest, BBC Four have promoted his name to the title to create a forgivable misnomer: Country Music by Ken Burns.The Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A defining chapter in American history is all but sold down river in Harriet, director Kasi Lemmons' tubthumpingly banal film about the extraordinary bravery and courage of the American freedom fighter, Harriet Tubman. Telling the same story more expansively chronicled several decades ago in a Cicely Tyson-led American mini-series, Harriet casts the diminutive yet mighty English actress Cynthia Erivo in the title role without seeming to know quite how to use her. In context, it comes as a relief when a performer who shot to fame (and won a Tony) on Broadway in The Color Purple gets to belt Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Leonard Bernstein talked about “the infinite variety of music” and the late maestro would have been thrilled by the variety on display at the Royal Festival Hall where Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi were as exciting and exhilarating as anything I’ve heard.Their performance, part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, lasted two hours but could have gone on for 22, a display of brilliant musicianship and total engagement that was breathtaking, two classically trained performers absolutely in command of their material and sharing their love and knowledge of it. The prior evening Giddens and Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
The pink, turquoise and orange world of Greener Grass is a riot of derangement. Here is the suburban dream gone haywire, where, out of politeness, a woman gives her baby to her friend because she admires it. Every adult wears braces, hair bleeds when you get it cut and a boy turns into a golden retriever (his father is delighted – at last he’s willing to run for the ball).There are echoes of The Truman Show, Stepford Wives and Desperate Housewives, even Dean Spanley, but Greener Grass is its own brand of surreal Americana, with a slice of Saturday Night Live thrown in. This is Jocelyn Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Thanks to a powerful cast and crisp direction from Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, Luther), 21 Bridges drives home its story of good cops, bad cops and a Big Apple rotten to the core with bulldozing force. Centre stage is Chadwick Boseman as Andre Davis, a detective renowned for showing bad guys no mercy. His record of shooting an alarming tally of felons has earned him a grilling by Internal Affairs, but Cool Hand Andre insists every killing was justified. Like his ailing old mother tells him, “you got to look the devil in the eye.”The son of a dedicated policeman killed in the line of duty, Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen is an institution in the States, running on Broadway since 2016 and currently on its second year of a national tour. It also made a star of original leading man Ben Platt, now appearing in Netflix’s The Politician – and this long-awaited West End production could well do the same for the exceedingly talented 21-year-old Sam Tutty.Tutty plays the titular Evan, a 17-year-old high school senior suffering from debilitating social anxiety. His well-meaning, divorcée mother, Heidi (Rebecca Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
It should come as no surprise that the writer of Side Effects and Contagion, Scott Z. Burns, is capable of directing a whip-smart drama like The Report. Known for his collaborations with Steven Soderbergh, most recently on Netflix drama The Laundromat, Burns has made a career of turning complex material into engaging viewing.Echoing All the President’s Men by way of Spotlight, The Report focuses on Daniel Jones (Adam Driver), tasked by US State Senator Dianne Feinstein with investigating the "Enhanced Interrogation Technique" employed by the Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Forty years after the classic, multi-Oscar winning Kramer v Kramer comes another divorce drama involving two young Americans and a son caught in the crossfire. And this one is even better. Marriage Story is a sublime film, a heart-breaking, intimate epic. It’s written and directed by Noah Baumbach, the New Yorker whose impressive back catalogue includes The Squid and The Whale (also about divorce), Greenberg and Frances Ha. His new film leaves no stone unturned in its dissection of marital upheaval. And it features superb, deeply moving Read more ...