England
Measure for Measure, RSC, Stratford review - 'problem play' has no problem with relevanceFriday, 03 October 2025
An opening video montage presents us with a rogues' gallery of powerful men who have done bad things. Plenty of the usual suspects appear to stomach-churning effect, but no ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, sentenced last week to five years in prison by... Read more... |
Lee Miller, Tate Britain review - an extraordinary career that remains an enigmaSaturday, 04 October 2025
Tate Britain’s Lee Miller retrospective begins with a soft focus picture of her by New York photographer Arnold Genthe dated 1927, when she was working as a fashion model. The image is so hazy that she appears as dreamlike and insubstantial as a... Read more... |
Murder Before Evensong, Acorn TV review - death comes to the picturesque village of ChamptonFriday, 03 October 2025
Rockin’ vicar the Rev Richard Coles is not only a C of E priest and former member of Bronski Beat and The Communards, but also a purveyor of crime fiction in the shape of his Canon Clement mysteries. The first of these was Murder Before Evensong,... Read more... |
The Hack, ITV review - plodding anatomy of twin UK scandalsMonday, 29 September 2025
The latest instalment of the ITV drama department’s attempts at trial by television is another anatomy of a scandal, but with little of the emotive power of Mr Bates vs The Post Office. It’s an odd, ungainly construct that attempts to meld two... Read more... |
Album: Robert Plant - Saving GraceSaturday, 20 September 2025
Robert Plant is magnificently well-equipped to shine as a consummate musical survivor: not only has his voice kept its magic, with a range from sensual caress to ecstatic howl, but he’s deeply rooted in timeless music, Scots-Irish and American folk... Read more... |
The Lady from the Sea, Bridge Theatre review - flashes of brillianceFriday, 19 September 2025
Like the lighting that crackles now and again to indicate an abrupt change of scene or mood, Simon Stone's version of The Lady from the Sea is illuminated by the sense of adventure and excitement one has come to expect from this singular artist.... Read more... |
Romans: A Novel, Almeida Theatre review - a uniquely extraordinary workFriday, 19 September 2025
OMG! I mean OMG doubled!! This is amazing! Or is it? Can Alice Birch’s Romans: A Novel at the Almeida Theatre really be the best play on the London stage, or is it not? Can it be both brilliant and exasperating? At one and the same time?... Read more... |
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review - comedy rock band fails to revive past gloriesMonday, 15 September 2025
That difficult second documentary – or if you will, “rockumentary” – seems to have been especially challenging for Spinal Tap, since it arrives no less than 41 years after its predecessor, This Is Spinal Tap. The latter has become renowned as a... Read more... |
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review - an attemptedly elegiac final chapter haunted by its pastSaturday, 13 September 2025
It can be a hostage to fortune to title anything “grand”, and so it proves with the last gasp of Julian Fellowes’s everyday story of posh folk at the turn of the 20th century. The Granthams are facing a lowering of their status, and it’s time to... Read more... |
Cow | Deer, Royal Court review - paradox-rich account of non-human lifeThursday, 11 September 2025
I love irony. Especially beautiful irony. So I’m very excited about the ironic gesture of staging a show with no words at the Royal Court, a venue which boasts of being the country’s premier new writing theatre. Billed as “a new experiment in... Read more... |
I Fought the Law, ITVX review - how an 800-year-old law was challenged and changedSaturday, 06 September 2025
ITV continues its passion for docudramas about injustice, which you can’t blame it for after the rip-roaring success of Mr Bates vs the Post Office. The issue in I Fought the Law is, from one angle, of national (even International) importance,... Read more... |
Born with Teeth, Wyndham's Theatre review - electric sparring match between Shakespeare and MarloweWednesday, 03 September 2025
The title refers to a line in Henry VI, Part III: the future Richard III boasts that midwives cried, "Oh Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth", a sign of both his monstrosity and his readiness to snarl and bite.Modern technological analysis... Read more... |
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