Greece
The Trip to Greece, Series Finale, Sky 1 review - bittersweet swansong for the cantankerous comradesWednesday, 01 April 2020
Could this mock-mythic journey, emulating the trek homewards to Ithaca of Homer’s hero Odysseus, really be the final series of The Trip (Sky 1)? Or will Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon see sense, and realise that they’ll never have as many free lunches... Read more... |
The Trip to Greece, Sky 1 review - jokes, jibes and indigestion in the footsteps of OdysseusWednesday, 04 March 2020
Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan have been taking their bickering TV trips for a decade, beginning in the north of England in 2010 before working their way around Italy, Spain and now Greece (on Sky 1). They say this will be the last time, but believe... Read more... |
The Mask of Orpheus, English National Opera review - amorphous excessSaturday, 19 October 2019
Advance publicity overstated the case for The Mask of Orpheus. "Iconic"? Only to academics and acolytes, for British audiences haven't had a chance to see a production since ENO's world premiere run in 1986. "Masterpiece"? Sitting there after the... Read more... |
Heartbreak Holiday, BBC One review - can it match up to Love Island?Wednesday, 21 August 2019
The BBC’s version of Love Island has familiar ingredients: ten 20-somethings, many with pale manicures and hair extensions, on an island, in this case Mykanos. It’s not to everyone’s taste. “All I see is water, I don’t see no nail shops,” observes... Read more... |
Marianne and Leonard review - the artist, his muse and collateral damageFriday, 26 July 2019
Nick Broomfield is never shy about inserting himself into his documentaries but here he has good reason: he was, briefly, a lover of Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen’s muse (So Long, Marianne was originally called Come On, Marianne; Bird on the Wire... Read more... |
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Harold Pinter Theatre review - smart stagecraft, skimpy scriptThursday, 11 July 2019
Better than the 2001 film but likely to disappoint devotees of the book, Captain Corelli's Mandolin onstage works best as a reminder of the identifiable stagecraft of its director, Melly Still. Playful, non-literal, and often endearingly physical (... Read more... |
Medea, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, Barbican review - lacerating contemporary tragedyThursday, 07 March 2019
Hallucinatory theatre has struck quite a few times in the Barbican's international seasons. On an epic scale we’ve had the Shakespeare compendiums Kings of War and Roman Tragedies from Toneelgroep Amsterdam, newly merged with the city's... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Longborough Festival review - appetising energy and witSaturday, 14 July 2018
Much as I love Strauss’s Ariadne in its final form, I have a sneaking nostalgia for the original version (attached to Hofmannsthal’s adaptation of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme), which had Zerbinetta and her companions popping up after the... Read more... |
Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece, British Museum review - magnificence of form across the millenniaFriday, 04 May 2018
In bronze, marble, stone and plaster, as far as the eye can see, powerful figures and fragments – divine and human, mythological and real; athletes, soldiers and horses alongside otherworldly creatures like Centaurs – stride out. They pose, re-pose... Read more... |
The Durrells, Series 3, ITV review - a winter warmer from CorfuMonday, 19 March 2018
When ITV scheduled this new series of The Durrells for mid-March, they probably didn’t imagine it would coincide with the return of the Beast from the East, with its blizzards and plummeting temperatures. Under these deep-frozen circumstances, what... Read more... |
The Return of Ulysses, Royal Opera, Roundhouse review - musical drama trumps dodgy stagecraftThursday, 11 January 2018
The power of music solves every problem, at least when as bewitchingly performed as it was here. With the great mezzo Christine Rice voiceless for at least a night, and rising star Caitlin Hulcup singing for her from the midst of the instruments in... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly Special: Callas LiveSaturday, 23 December 2017
Remastered they may be, but the 20 live operas recorded here between 1949 and 1964 vary soundwise from clean at best to atrocious, with all the caprices of stage noise and audience participation seemingly acceptable at the time (so often there's the... Read more... |
