London
Laura Marling, Union Chapel, YouTube review - communication breakdownMonday, 08 June 2020
Music, as the sociologist Simon Frith long ago pointed out, is “an experience of placing: in responding to a song we are drawn, haphazardly, into affective emotional alliances with the performer and with the performer’s other fans”. Music makes you... Read more... |
Stephen Hough/Lucy Crowe, Anna Tilbrook, Wigmore Hall online/BBC Radio 3 review - the end of the beginningWednesday, 03 June 2020
After a devastating drought, even a light shower can feel like something of a miracle. Under normal circumstances, a 60 minute lunchtime piano recital from the Wigmore Hall would represent wholly unremarkable business as usual for BBC Radio 3. As it... Read more... |
Album: Westerman - Your Hero is not DeadWednesday, 03 June 2020
Will Westerman is not afraid of sounding retro. It's clear his influences are diverse, from jazz fusion to the bedroom proto-house experiments of Arthur Russell. But in their final form, his high gloss production, highly literate songs and fretless... Read more... |
Album: Footsie - No FavoursThursday, 21 May 2020
Footsie might not have the profile of a Skepta or Wiley, or even his Newham Generals partner and recent IKEA advert soundtracker D Double E. But anyone halfway schooled in grime will know that both as MC and producer he's a key player from grime's... Read more... |
Antony and Cleopatra, National Theatre at Home review – Fiennes and Okonedo triumph in dragging tragedyMonday, 11 May 2020
Like an asp eating its own tail, the National Theatre's 2018 production of Antony and Cleopatra, streaming on YouTube until 14 May, begins as it will end. Director Simon Godwin's first tableau is the play's finale: Cleopatra (Sophie Okonedo) lies in... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 4: Little-known Lloyd Webber, prize-winning Shakespeare, and starry David MametThursday, 07 May 2020
Has anyone else noticed how fulltime this streaming thing has become? Those who were of a mind to (and who never slept) could find enough cultural output to satisfy 24/7, especially if one adds to the free offerings that crop up by the week... Read more... |
Album: Dinosaur - To the EarthWednesday, 06 May 2020
Dinosaur’s Mercury-nominated debut was a jolt of 1970s Miles and James Brown electricity. This third album steps back into the familiar comforts of acoustic jazz, with a cool inquisitiveness combining trumpeter-leader Laura Jurd’s rural... Read more... |
Code 404, Sky One review - surreal cop comedy presses the right buttonsThursday, 30 April 2020
DI John Major (Daniel Mays) has been dead a year, shot in the line of duty, though we’re far from that series in terms of tone. Now he’s back at the London Met, artificially augmented, but not very intelligently. If anything he’s a bit more shit... Read more... |
Gangs of London, Sky Atlantic review - bloody terrifyingFriday, 24 April 2020
You might consider equipping yourself with a shotgun and kevlar body armour before you start watching Gangs of London (Sky Atlantic), because this is a bruising, hair-raising ride. Created by Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery, it began with the... Read more... |
The Host review - implausible suspense thrillerThursday, 16 April 2020
A camel is a horse designed by committee, they say; perhaps that explains why The Host, with several writing credits – adapted by Zachary Weckstein from a story by Laurence Lamers, screenplay by Finola Geraghty, Brendan Bishop and Lamers – doesn't... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, RSC/Stratford-upon-Avon online review - inventive but underfeltWednesday, 15 April 2020
Twelfth Night is rarely long-absent from the British stage and nor is it in our current climate of streaming aplenty. This 2017 production for the RSC from the director Christopher Luscombe will soon be followed online by the National Theatre’s... Read more... |
Flowers for Mrs Harris, Chichester Festival Theatre online review - a warmly open-hearted weepieMonday, 13 April 2020
18 months or so after it opened in Chichester, Flowers for Mrs Harris launches a sequence of streamed productions from the West Sussex venue just in time to allow a new British musical to join the ever-swelling ranks of theatrical offerings online.... Read more... |
