England
Matt Wolf
How does the ever cherub-cheeked Alex Lawther keep getting served in pubs? That question crossed my mind during the more leisurely portions of Old Boys, an overextended English schoolboy revamp of Cyrano de Bergerac that flags just when it most needs narrative adrenaline. Age 23 now but playing someone far younger in the film, Lawther plays a scholarship student called Amberson, who appears to inhabit various pubs with nary a question asked. Audiences, meanwhile, may have questions of their own about how such a promising idea was allowed to dissipate to this degree. The setting is a Read more ...
Tim Cornwell
Breathe in the love and breathe out the bullshit. After the Arcola Theatre's founder and artistic director Mehmet Ergen read Keith? A Comedy, a wild spin on the quasi-ubiquitous (these days, anyway) Tartuffe by the critic and writer Patrick Marmion, the theatre moved to cast and stage the play in a matter of weeks. Fresh and timely is the result. Marmion's central couple Morgan and Veena are your archetypally idiosyncratic North London family in the age of Corbyn. Morgan is a reformed hedonist who made a fortune from a start-up pocket-money app; Veena, an Anglo-Asian Professor of Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Back in 2017, The Foo Fighters did a surprise pre-Glastonbury gig at Frome’s Cheese & Grain, a rather soulless shed near the equally soulless Westway Shopping Centre. So much for Frome being the heart of a new alternative Britain, almost a parallel universe with the only state-funded Steiner school in the country. The all-purpose venue is better known for programming a string of covers bands, the bi-monthly Vegan Market and the Seed Swap and Potato Day. The place was packed on Sunday night for a gig by Lau, the much-touted avant-folk band from Scotland.Kris Drever (guitar and vocals), Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
This is an astonishing book: in its breadth, depth and detail and also in its almost palpable, and sometimes unpalatable, admiration of its subject, the controversial, long-lived Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012). But if you want to immerse yourself in the course of changing views of history, the newly minted social and contextual narratives of the post-war period, and meet the vast and entertaining spectrum of 20th century academic life among historians, and even encounter the history of the past century, this is it. The intricate personal details of the life of Eric Hobsbawm, Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The Arthurian legend’s tight fit as a Brexit allegory perhaps proves how timeless it is as, buried and bound in the earth by Merlin, Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson) senses the land above is “lost and leaderless”, and ripe for her apocalyptic return.This ripped from the headlines quality to The Kid Who Would Be King is largely coincidence, director Joe Cornish has claimed. When he had the germ of this idea as an ‘80s teenager, giddy with the possibilities of splicing E.T. and John Boorman’s Excalibur, Britain and the world were quite riven enough. The myth of a king also buried in the soil, to be Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Tides tells of fortysomething angst and camaraderie, though “tells” might be an exaggeration. In a concerted attempt to make a film with minimal incidents and structure, first-time feature director Tupac Felber made a likeable observational piece, based mostly on improvisation, rather than a compelling “watch”.Over a long summer weekend, Jon (Jon Foster), matey but highly-strung, and his quiet and equable friend Zooby (Jamie Zubairi) travel on a barge along some lovely Surrey waterways. They are joined by their cheerful, mouthy woman pal Red (Robyn Isaac), and the self-contained Simon (Simon Read more ...
Sarah Kent
I interviewed Don McCullin in 1983 and the encounter felt like peering into a deep well of darkness. The previous year he’d been in Beirut photographing the atrocities carried out by people on both sides of the civil war and his impeccably composed pictures were being published as a book. Some of these photographs are included in Tate Britain’s survey of his 60-year career, one of the darkest but most compelling exhibitions you are ever likely to see. There’s the group of young musicians approaching the body of a Palestinian girl lying prone in a bombed out street – celebrating her death Read more ...
Sir Trevor Nunn
So here we are with another edition of IQ, and the subject this week is theatre. Question one: which actor originated several leading roles in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, including Marchbanks in Candida, Dubedat in The Doctor's Dilemma, and Jack Tanner in Man and Superman? Answer: Harley Granville Barker. Question two: which writer originated the use of the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square as a home for new plays and rediscovered classics? Answer: Harley Granville Barker. Question three: which activist/essayist campaigned for a National Theatre to be an ensemble playing in Read more ...
Matt Wolf
All may be true but not much is of interest in this Kenneth Branagh-directed film that casts an actor long-steeped in the Bard as a gardening-minded Shakespeare glimpsed in (lushly filmed) retirement. Seemingly conceived in order to persuade filmgoers of the man from Stratford's greatness (does that really need reiterating?), the movie benefits from the inestimable presence of Judi Dench and Ian McKellen, the latter in a sizzling cameo that briefly lifts proceedings to a different level. But Ben Elton's eye-rolling script pays homage to the Bard's "beautiful poetry" one time too many and Read more ...
Tim Cumming
With books including Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways and Landmarks, Robert MacFarlane has established himself as one of the leading writers on landscape in the English language, continuing a literary tradition that contains talents as diverse as John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, Edward Thomas and Laurie Lee. His 2017 collaboration with the artist Jackie Morris on a large-format book of poems for children called The Lost Words: A Spell Book has now been adapted for stage, with Morris creating brand new art works for a UK tour, beginning on Friday 8 February at Snape Maltings, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
A picture is worth more than a thousand words, never more so than with the photographs of Don McCullin. The octogenarian photographer’s black-and-white imagery made the Sunday Times colour supplement the talk of international media in the 1970s. McCullin, a North Londoner born and bred, travelled the world’s war zones before coming home 35 years ago to a Somerset world of landscapes and still-lifes, whilst still periodically going off to new conflicts, most recently to Syria and Yemen. With a major retrospective opening at Tate Britain this week, Adrian Sibley’s film followed him as he once Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Last spring, Imagining Ireland took a fresh, shamrock-free look at contemporary Ireland’s cultural scene, with spoken word and alt-folk mixing with indie rock and jazz, classical, gospel and rap, with the line-up led by Bell X1’s Paul Noonan and Lisa Hannigan.One year on, and Imagining Ireland returns, but with a new brief – to examine the Irish life in England – and a new line-up. And for contemporary Irish folk fans, this line-up will be your ticket to heaven – led by The Gloaming’s genius fiddler Martin Hayes and sean nos singer Iarla O'Lionaird, alongside two of the best younger singers Read more ...