London
Hilary Mantel: The Mirror & the Light review - magnificence must have an endSunday, 12 April 2020
Praise be to quarantine days for the chance to savour this, the crowning glory of the Wolf Hall trilogy - if not with the supernatural vigilance and attentiveness of Thomas Cromwell himself, then at least with something of the leisurely diligence it... Read more... |
Colors performance stream on YouTube review - vocalists on lockdownTuesday, 07 April 2020
The Colors studio in Berlin has quietly created one of the biggest new brands in music from filming back-to-basics performances with laser-focused branding. From international megastars (Billie Eilish, Mac DeMarco) to up-and-comers, singers and... Read more... |
DVD: The StreetTuesday, 31 March 2020
Zed Nelson brings enormous humanity to this portrait of the changing identity of Hackney’s Hoxton Street as gentrification impinges on its long-established community. Shops that have been there for decades vanish overnight, fancy new pavement cafes... Read more... |
Rock ‘n’ Roll Island: Where Legends Were Born, BBC Four review - remembering rock's big bangSaturday, 28 March 2020
“Friday night is Amami night” – that was the ad that ran from the 1920s through to the 1950s for a brand of “setting lotion”, a delightfully old-fashioned term. Those were the days when young women stayed home and did their hair, in preparation for... Read more... |
Belgravia, ITV review - when the toffs and the nouveaux riches collidedMonday, 16 March 2020
The prolific Lord Fellowes returns with this six-part adaptation of his own novel (for ITV), a niftily-wrought yarn (originally issued in online instalments) about the old aristocracy and the rise of new money in the early 19th Century. Some are... Read more... |
Reg Meuross and David Massengill, Green Note, Camden review - master craftsmen at workMonday, 16 March 2020
When all around you is chaos and depression, an afternoon spent listening to acoustic music in a small club is as cleansing and restorative as a warm bath. At Camden’s Green Note on Saturday afternoon, two superlative folk music talents shared the... Read more... |
Hilary Fannin: The Weight of Love review – unravelling knotty livesSunday, 15 March 2020
The relationship between Joe, Robin and Ruth is far from your average love triangle. On the face of it, Robin loves Ruth, but after introducing her to his charismatic friend Joe – an artist and renegade – their affair reroutes all of their lives... Read more... |
Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Eventim Apollo review - and the band played onSaturday, 14 March 2020
Elvis Costello is arguably – perhaps unarguably – the most enduring and genuine talent to emerge from the mid-Seventies pub and punk scenes, and his two-hour set on Friday night demonstrated that he’s still a compelling performer, full of energy and... Read more... |
Album: Maria McKee - La Vita NuovaMonday, 09 March 2020
From Tom Cruise soundtrack hit singer to self-described “pansexual, polyamorous, gender-fluid dyke”, and from LA country-punks Lone Justice to a Blakean songwriter in thrall to London’s phantom spirits, Maria McKee’s 13-year musical absence has... Read more... |
Bill Brandt/Henry Moore, The Hepworth Wakefield review - a matter of perceptionTuesday, 03 March 2020
Bill Brandt’s photographs and Henry Moore’s studies of people sheltering underground during the Blitz (September 1940 to May 1941) offer glimpses of a world that is, thankfully, lost to us. A year and a half after the end of the bombing... Read more... |
United Queendom, Kensington Palace review - rollicking royal taleTuesday, 03 March 2020
Les Enfants Terribles is the theatre company behind several interesting immersive projects, including Alice's Adventures Underground and Inside Pussy Riot. Now it has joined forces with Historic Royal Palaces to tell the story of two women integral... Read more... |
Michael Nath: The Treatment review - 'deeds, and language, such as men do use'Sunday, 01 March 2020
Great writing about – or set in – London has one thing in common: voice. It’s tuned into the city’s multiple frequencies, its sometimes marvellous, sometimes maddening mix of different registers and rhythms. It adopts and adapts the capital’s... Read more... |
