mythology
The Rhinegold, English National Opera review - tacky, edgy, brilliantMonday, 20 February 2023All that glitters, titular treasure included, is dangerous childsplay in Richard Jones’s third UK staging of what Wagner called the “preliminary evening” to the three main operas of The Ring of the Nibelung. It’s nothing like the previous two, for... Read more... |
Ruination, Linbury Theatre review - Medea gets a makeoverWednesday, 07 December 2022At a time when every other theatre is offering an alternative Christmas show, what to make of the Royal Opera House’s first collaboration with Lost Dog, aka director-choreographer Ben Duke, who has come up with the most un-merry topic imaginable?... Read more... |
Thor: Love and Thunder review - more like it from MarvelSaturday, 09 July 2022Twenty-eight films and 19 proliferating TV series in, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was becoming wearisome, testing fans’ faith with grimly effortful new entries, and choking other sorts of film into the margins, like knotweed. But like the mid-20th... Read more... |
Album: Hercules & Love Affair - In AmberSaturday, 11 June 2022A gothic aesthetic is very common in the left field of electronic/club music these days – but it tends to go with fairly extreme sounds: either industrial pummelling, or glitched-out “deconstructed club” as in artists like Ziúr.But Andy Butler... Read more... |
Girl on an Altar, Kiln Theatre review - machismo, murder and motherhood in mesmerising mythSaturday, 28 May 2022Playwrights return to classical myths for two main reasons – to shine a light on how we live today and because they're bloody good yarns.Marina Carr's re-telling of Clytemnestra's story is boldly innovative in its conception and execution, but... Read more... |
Jerusalem, Apollo Theatre review - Mark Rylance blazes in this astonishing revivalSaturday, 30 April 2022At long last, the giant has come back. Over a decade after its critical apotheosis on both sides of the Atlantic, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem returns to London in an astonishing revival starring Mark Rylance as the high priest of its proceedings.... Read more... |
The Tale of King Crab review - an unholy fool's phantasmagoric progressSaturday, 23 April 2022“Crazy? Aristocrat? Sad? Killer? Drunk?” A modern Tuscan hunting lodge’s regulars remember the myth of irascible rebel Luciano many ways, as it endures from the previous century’s misty turn. Italian-American co-directors Matteo Zoppi and Allessio... Read more... |
The Book of Dust, Bridge Theatre review – as much intelligence and provocation as fleet-footed funThursday, 09 December 2021It’s been seventeen years since Nicholas Hytner first directed Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials at the National Theatre, ambitiously whirling audiences into Pullman’s universe of daemons, damnable clerics and parallel worlds. Now he has... Read more... |
Metamorphoses, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - punchy, cleverly reworked classicThursday, 07 October 2021Ovid was exiled – or to put it in twenty-first century terms, "no-platformed" – by an indignant Emperor Augustus for the scandal caused by his three-book elegy on love, Ars Amatoria. Most scholars believe the intrigue behind his banishment to be... Read more... |
Paradise, National Theatre review - war, woe, and a glimmer of hopeFriday, 13 August 2021Philoctetes, Odysseus, Neoptolemus: the men’s names in Sophocles’ Philoctetes are all unnecessarily long and weighed down by expectations. Poet Kae Tempest’s lyrical new adaptation for the National Theatre focuses on the chorus, spinning out the... Read more... |
Changing Destiny, Young Vic review – an epic literary discoveryMonday, 02 August 2021The Young Vic, led by the inspiring figure of Kwame Kwei-Armah, is back. After a prolonged closure, during which this venue has passionately continued to work with young directors, the local community (including both delivering food and creative... Read more... |
Die Walküre, Longborough Festival Opera review - heroic defiance of farcical constraintsFriday, 04 June 2021Whatever might be said about Longborough Festival’s first live opera since 2019, the first and most important thing is to praise the company without reservation for putting on a show of anything like this quality in the face of obstacles of the sort... Read more... |