Barbican
Ludovico Einaudi, Barbican review - a long road to nowhereThursday, 01 August 2019
There is a video, part of Greenpeace’s laudable Save The Arctic Campaign, in which Ludovico Einaudi sits at a Steinway atop a small ice flow performing his Elegy for the Arctic. As he plays a descending scale, the camera pans slightly to the right... Read more... |
Lucinda Williams, Barbican review - memories, heartache and Southern secretsMonday, 29 July 2019
“I’m talking about these songs in more depth than I usually do, revealing a few secrets along the way,” says a black–jeaned, cowboy-booted Lucinda Williams after singing “Right in Time”, the achingly erotic first song on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road... Read more... |
Jesus Christ Superstar, Barbican review - Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical lives againWednesday, 10 July 2019
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1970 musical had a heavenly resurrection at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre three years ago, with an encore run the following summer. It’s soon heading off on a US tour, but first there’s another chance for... Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, Rattle, LSO, Barbican review – dark magic in the woodsFriday, 28 June 2019
As midsummer night’s dreams go, it would be hard to surpass the darkly enchanting collaboration between Sir Simon Rattle and Peter Sellars that will bring The Cunning Little Vixen to the Barbican again this evening and on Saturday. Janáček’s... Read more... |
LSO, Guildhall School, Rattle, Barbican review - irresistible momentumFriday, 21 June 2019
The Barbican Hall hardly boasts the numinous acoustic of Gloucester Cathedral for which Vaughan Williams composed his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, but Sir Simon Rattle has long known how to build space into the architecture of what he... Read more... |
The Damned, Comédie-Française, Barbican review - slow-burn horrors in devastating imagesFriday, 21 June 2019
Is the terrifying past of Germany in 1933 also our future? Having had nightmares about the brilliant dystopian TV soap opera Years and Years, which built like all the best of its kind on present fears, I wasn't expecting to be confronted so soon by... Read more... |
Milton Nascimento, Barbican review – besotted audience hails frail legendWednesday, 19 June 2019
Milton Nascimento is 76. Physically, he is quite frail; he had to be helped carefully onto the stage and then up into a high stool for this London concert by a couple of band members. But that arrival and rather ungainly progress were, as one might... Read more... |
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cheek by Jowl/Pushkin Theatre, Barbican review - theatre satire updatedThursday, 06 June 2019
Director Declan Donnellan has a rich record of working with Russian actors: his previous walk on the Slavic side, the darkly powerful Measure for Measure that came to the Barbican four years ago, was preceded by some magnificent versions of... Read more... |
Lee Krasner: Living Colour, Barbican review - jaw-droppingly goodMonday, 03 June 2019
If you know of any chauvinists who dare to maintain that women can’t paint, take them to this astounding retrospective. Lee Krasner faced patronising dismissal at practically every turn in her career yet she persisted and went on to produce some of... Read more... |
Agrippina, Barbican review - over-the-top comic brillianceSaturday, 01 June 2019
Flirtations and fragile alliances, lies, betrayals, schemes and the ever-present promise of sex – Love Island may be back on our screens next week, but it has nothing on Handel's Agrippina. Imperial Rome is the backdrop for one of the composer’... Read more... |
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Pappano, Barbican review – joy in despairMonday, 27 May 2019
As one half of British politics convulsed into a deeper spasm of suicidal fury, it came almost as a relief to hear a great Anglo-Italian conductor lead an impassioned Roman orchestra in a massive, terrifying symphony once described by a (German)... Read more... |
Los Angeles Master Chorale, Gershon, Sellars, Barbican review – embodiments of remorseFriday, 24 May 2019
By some strange alignment of the stars, Peter Sellars’s staged version of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St Peter) arrived at the Barbican Hall just as – next door in the theatre – Pam Tanowitz’s directed her dance interpretation... Read more... |
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