Holland
Rats on Rafts, The Victoria review - crepuscular Dutch quintet begins to see the lightTuesday, 25 February 2025
An album is one thing, a live show is another. A truism of course, but one which is inescapable during this London date by the Rotterdam-based Rats on Rafts at a shabby chic pub in Dalston, East London.Rats on Rafts’ measured new album, Deep Below... Read more... |
Album: Rats on Rafts - Deep BelowFriday, 07 February 2025
Deep Below’s first track is titled “Hibernation.” “A winter breeze blows through my mind,” intones a colourless, dispirited male voice. The ensuing lyrics are similarly bleak. “Trying to warm myself with the memories you’ve left behind, Deep inside... Read more... |
The Years, Almeida Theatre review - matchless acting quintet makes for a must-seeThursday, 08 August 2024
The title sounds as if we ought to be in for an evening of Virginia Woolf, and, indeed, one of the astonishing women on view (Deborah Findlay) was in fact a co-star of the recent West End version of Orlando. In fact, this late-summer offering is a... Read more... |
Album: Personal Trainer - Still WillingMonday, 29 July 2024
Still Willing opens with “Upper Ferntree Gully,” a seven and three-quarter minute workout twice as long as most of the other nine tracks on Personal Trainer’s second album. A portmanteau piece, its most direct sections have the chug of vintage... Read more... |
10 Questions for DJ-producer Dave ClarkeWednesday, 24 July 2024
Dave Clarke (b. 1968) is, arguably, Britain’s greatest techno DJ. Although, in fact, he has lived in Amsterdam since 2009. He is also a producer of repute. His Red singles of the mid-Nineties are regarded as groundbreaking productions.He followed... Read more... |
Occupied City review - unquiet Nazi crimesTuesday, 13 February 2024
“I feel as if I am live reporting from a shipwreck,” Dutch-Jewish journalist Philip Mechanicus wrote en route to his concentration camp murder. Steve McQueen’s four-hour reverie on Amsterdam’s Nazi occupation teases out the scars of that arbitrary,... Read more... |
Shabu review - documentary-drama about youngsters in RotterdamFriday, 07 July 2023
This loose-limbed movie follows Shabu, a 14-year-old boy who is growing up on the public housing estate known as the Peperklip (Paperclip) in Rotterdam. It’s the summer holidays and he’d like to hang out with his girlfriend and his mates, but first... Read more... |
Song from Far Away, Hampstead Theatre review - gentle monologue from a man grappling with griefMonday, 03 July 2023
Lucky Will Young: the production of the Simon Stephens monologue Song from Far Away that he is delivering at the Hampstead Theatre is directed by Kirk Jameson, not Ivo van Hove.The modish Dutch director of the initial UK staging, seen at the Young... Read more... |
A different angle on the Anne Frank story in 'A Small Light'Wednesday, 03 May 2023
The Diary of Anne Frank became a Broadway play and has formed the basis of a lengthy catalogue of films and TV series, but the name of Miep Gies is rather less well-known. Yet without Gies the Anne Frank story might never have reached the wider... Read more... |
Album: Amber Arcades - Barefoot On Diamond RoadWednesday, 08 February 2023
In this context, what’s named “diamond road” is a metaphor for staying on course rather than, as the lyrics of the song “Diamond Road” put it, letting yourself go or sprawling all over the floor. Follow this route and life won’t be a mess.Barefoot... Read more... |
Van der Valk, Series 2 Finale, ITV review - sleaze, corruption and skulduggery in AmsterdamMonday, 22 August 2022
Despite the jarring effect of having British actors speaking colloquial English while purporting to be Dutch policemen working in Amsterdam, the second series of ITV’s Van der Valk arrived at its third and final episode feeling as if it had reached... Read more... |
Age of Rage, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, Barbican review - shattering assault on all the sensesMonday, 09 May 2022
Hunger for the gruesome horrors and euphoric highs of Greek tragedy seems to be stronger than ever. Yet when it comes to epic sequences, nothing in recent decades has quite had the impact of Peter Hall’s Aeschylus Oresteia at the National Theatre or... Read more... |
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