England
Quadrophenia, Sadler's Wells review - missed opportunity to give new stage life to a Who classicMonday, 30 June 2025
The red, white and blue bull’s-eye on the front curtain at Sadler’s Wells tells us we are in the familiar territory of Pete Townshend’s rock musical about teenage angst in 1960s Britain. What follows isn’t so easy to recognise.Quadrophenia started... Read more... |
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Gallery review - a protégé losing her wayFriday, 04 July 2025
When in the 1990s, Jenny Saville’s peers shunned painting in favour of alternative media such as photography, video and installations, the artist stuck to her guns and, unapologetically, worked on canvases as large as seven feet tall. While still a... Read more... |
Chicken Town review - sluggish rural comedy with few laughs (and one chicken)Friday, 27 June 2025
Fans of the character comedian Graham Fellows will possibly turn up for this British film starring the man who created the punk parody single “Jilted John” and Sheffield’s finest, the car-coated singer-songwriter John Shuttleworth. But they may... Read more... |
Outrageous, U&Drama review - skilfully-executed depiction of the notorious Mitford sistersMonday, 23 June 2025
If somebody submitted a treatment for a new costume drama series set in the 1930s in which not just one but two fictitious sisters from a fading aristocratic family pair off with leading fascists, while the cousin warning them off these liaisons is... Read more... |
28 Years Later review - an unsentimental, undead educationSaturday, 21 June 2025
The 23 years since 28 Days Later and especially those since Danny Boyle’s soulful encapsulation of Britain’s best spirit at the 2012 Olympics have offered rich material for a franchise about deserted cities, rampaging viruses, hard quarantines and... Read more... |
Edward Burra, Tate Britain review - watercolour made mainstreamWednesday, 18 June 2025
It’s unusual to leave an exhibition liking an artist’s work less than when you went in, but Tate Britain’s retrospective of Edward Burra manages to achieve just this. I’ve always loved Burra’s limpid late landscapes. Layers of filmy watercolour... Read more... |
Lollipop review - a family torn apartSaturday, 14 June 2025
On leaving prison, Lollipop’s thirtyish single mum Molly discovers that reclaiming her kids from social care is akin to doing lengths in a shark-infested swimming pool teeming with naval mines. Thanks to Posy Sterling’s technically astounding... Read more... |
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the French can do you-know-whoFriday, 13 June 2025
Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the decades. As we brave the salutes on this side of the Channel to arch irony-spinner Jane Austen’s 250th birth-year –... Read more... |
Big Star: The Nick Skelton Story review - the ways of a man with his mountSunday, 08 June 2025
If you’re horse mad or merely an every-four-years Olympic fan, you already know Nick Skelton’s story. Equestrianism can favour mature competitors, but Skelton was twice the age of his rivals. He'd survived numerous injuries – including a broken... Read more... |
Mrs Warren's Profession, Garrick Theatre review - mother-daughter showdown keeps it in the familySaturday, 24 May 2025
How do you make Bernard Shaw sear the stage anew? You can trim the text, as the director Dominic Cooke has, bringing this prolix writer's 1893 play in under the two-hour mark, no interval. And you can introduce a non-speaking ensemble of women in... Read more... |
Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality of deaf people's experienceThursday, 22 May 2025
In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV detective series, the spotlight has now landed on Canterbury. Code of Silence frequently inserts a dramatic aerial shot of the city, its streets radiating out from the... Read more... |
The Deep Blue Sea, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - Tamsin Greig honours Terence RattiganSaturday, 17 May 2025
The water proves newly inviting in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's mournful 1952 play that some while ago established its status as an English classic. Lindsay Posner's production, first seen in Bath with one major change of cast since then,... Read more... |
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