America
stephen.walsh
Considering the doubtfulness of its underlying idea, James Macdonald’s production of Rigoletto has shown remarkable staying power since its Cardiff début 17 years ago. It’s true that this particular opera - which, unlike one or two others of Verdi’s, was premiered in its correct Mantuan setting - does to some extent lend itself to relocation in time and place, as Jonathan Miller’s famous mafioso production for ENO once showed. But Kennedy’s White House remains tricky, involving absurdities beyond even those (not inconsiderable) in the original. So why does it survive? I’d hate to think Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“It’s nice to make money – lots of money,” said Michel Cohen, former high-flying New York art dealer turned debtor, jailbird and fugitive. He made oodles of the stuff and then lost it all, leaving a string of wealthy art collectors and galleries to lick their wounds over the colossal debts he never repaid.Vanessa Engle’s film for the BBC's Arena strand was a portrait of the man and the big-money art scene of the 1990s, as well as a barely-believable detective story as the documentarist tracked down her quarry after he’d disappeared in Rio de Janeiro 16 years ago. Vengeful creditors and Read more ...
Stephanie Sy-Quia
October 5th in the United States is a day for righteous rage. In 2016 it marked the release of the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape in which Donald Trump made his now-infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment. In 2017, it was the date the New York Times published their first story on Hollywood king-pin producer Harvey Weinstein. In 2018 it was the date on which the Senate saw fit to advance Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s work concerns Weinstein, but is bookended by Trump and Kavanaugh. She Said tells the story of their investigation for Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Connoisseurs of gnarly Boston-based crime sagas like The Town, The Departed and Black Mass will quickly find themselves at home in this sleaze-ridden new show, made by Showtime and brought to us by Sky Atlantic. Created and largely written by Chuck MacLean, it’s umbilically linked to the aforesaid movies in various ways, being produced by Boston’s finest Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (from The Town and The Departed) and starring Kevin Bacon – an FBI man in Black Mass – as another FBI man, Jackie Rohr.It’s 1992, and though there’s change in the wind, the Boston police are an incestuously-knit Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The work isn't finished on Big, if this stage musical of the beloved 1988 Tom Hanks film is ever to, um, make it big. A Broadway flop in 1996 where it was among the last shows directed by the late, much-admired Englishman Mike Ockrent, the material finds a sweetness in its West End incarnation that eluded it Stateside. But even with onetime boyband member Jay McGuiness adroitly capturing the manchild played by Hanks onscreen, the show remains awkwardly positioned between the satiric and the sentimental. And a ruthless pruning wouldn't go amiss either: by the time we'd got to the long-aborning Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Mudhoney’s new album Morning in America is a strange beast. Made up of outtakes from last year’s Digital Garbage, a cover version and rerecorded versions of limited edition 7” singles, one look at the track listing suggests a second CD that might eventually accompany a reissue somewhere down the line. It also implies a release forced by contractual obligations or a cash-flow problem at their label, Sub Pop. Such an assumption would totally disregard the music, however, which is nothing less than magnificent throughout. For while Digital Garbage took a shot at the corrosive influence of Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
The Ailey company is that rare thing – a dance legend that’s even better than you remember. While no one forgets their first encounter with America’s No.1 touring troupe and its unique mix of ballet, modern, jazz, street, and all-round athletic fabulousness, repeat viewings only increase one’s respect. The opening night of Programme C at Sadler’s Wells notched up my own 13th exposure to Revelations, the company’s barn-storming calling card inspired by Ailey’s early experience of segregated rural Texas. And it’s still fresh. Try as I might to spot a pasted-on smile in “Rocka My Soul”, there Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
There is no equivalent of the Ailey phenomenon. This is a modern dance company with a New York square named after it. It’s a dance company that has performed at the inauguration of two presidents. Its calling card, Revelations, a suite of dances first performed in 1960, is the most-watched modern dance work anywhere, ever.And how could it not be, when the Ailey bills it as a closer at every show? No matter which of three programmes you book to see at Sadler’s Wells, you will get the signature sign-off. It’s half an hour and a bit of kinetic joy drawing on Ailey’s memories of the Baptist Read more ...
Marianka Swain
William Finn and James Lapine’s musical – which combines two linked one-acts, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, set in late 1970s/early 1980s New York – picked up Tony Awards in 1992 for its book and score, and was nominated again in 2016 for an acclaimed revival. Yet the UK hasn’t sighted this landmark piece until now, with Tara Overfield-Wilkinson directing and choreographing an engaging if somewhat chaotic production.Daniel Boys plays Marvin, who recently left wife Trina (Laura Pitt-Pulford) for lover Whizzer (Oliver Savile, pictured below) – while maintaining close ties for Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The high, crackhead days of James Frey (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are over in five adrenalized minutes, as he dances naked to the Smashing Pumpkins, then tumbles insensibly backwards from a ledge. Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of Frey’s controversially fictionalised addiction memoir then focuses unsensationally on his recovery.“I’ve never seen this degree of degradation in someone so young,” a doctor intones. James’s battered face is further, outward testament that any backsliding will be fatal. Taylor-Johnson emphasises redemption over that degradation, in the sunlit corridors of a rehab Read more ...
Nick Hasted
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Pete Koslow (Joel Kinnaman) wouldn’t have any luck at all. Being an Iraq special forces veteran jailed for protecting his wife in a bar fight seems wretched karma enough. Released as an undercover informant on the Polish mob for FBI handler Wilcox (Rosamund Pike), his bid to secure real freedom with his family is then kiboshed when a similarly clandestine New York cop is killed by his gangster partner.In return for such unwanted heat, both Polish kingpin the General (Eugene Lipinski) and Wilcox insist that Koslow re-enter his brutally corrupt alma mater, Bale Hill Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There’s something truly sad and dispiriting about listening to an artist trash their back catalogue and absolutely totally ruin their greatest song, especially when that song has acquired anthemic status and been chosen to be preserved by the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry. Bob Dylan does it, of course, but that’s intentional. Martha Reeves clearly doesn’t realise how terrible she sounds and no one has had the courage to tell her. What are sisters for?Her younger sisters Lois and Delphine, who currently comprise The Vandellas, perhaps have too much of a vested interest Read more ...