thu 05/12/2024

sexism

Until I Kill You, ITV1 review - superb performances in a frustrating true-crime story

The latest true-crime adaptation about a murderous man and his female victims turns its star into a bloody mess on a hospital table, her vital signs flatlining. And that’s just halfway through, with two episodes to go. At least the second half...

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Since Yesterday review - championing a neglected female music scene

Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland's Girl Bands is one of those films that, perhaps embarrassingly, feels very necessary. An examination of the history of solely all female bands in Scotland since the 1960s, it is a great demonstration of...

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The Lightest Element, Hampstead Theatre review - engrossing, but fragmentary

British theatre has a proud heritage of science plays. From 1990s classics such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993) and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998) to more recent examples such as Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes (2017) and Marek Horn’s Octopolis (2023...

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Marie Curie, Charing Cross Theatre review - like polonium, best left undiscovered

There are many women whose outstanding science was attributed to men or simply devalued to the point of obscurity, but recent interest in the likes of DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin and NASA’s Katherine Johnson has given credit where credit is due....

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Testmatch, Orange Tree Theatre review - Raj rage, old and new, flares in cricket dramedy

Cricket has always been a lens through which to examine the legacy of the British Empire. In the 1930s, the infamous Bodyline series saw the new nation, Australia, stand up to its big brother’s bullying tactics. In the 1970s, the all-conquering West...

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The Peasants review - earthbound animation

After a few years of cinema, the wow factor of seeing actual things moving about on a screen wore off a bit and showmen saw that jump cuts and stop-motion – the dawn of animation – could lift audiences some more. The liberation from gravity, in fact...

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Nineteen Gardens, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review - intriguing, beautifully observed two-hander tilts power this way and that

A middle-aged man, expensively dressed and possessed of that very specific confidence that only comes from a certain kind of education, a certain kind of professional success, a certain kind of entitlement, talks to a younger woman. Despite the fact...

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The Royal Hotel review - sexual malice in Australia

The jitters-inducing first feature directed on home soil by the Australian filmmaker Kitty Green is named after The Royal Hotel, the only pub in an Outback mining community removed from civilised society. To suggest all the blokes who drink there...

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Modest, Kiln Theatre review - tale of Victorian would-be trailblazer fails and succeeds

Whether you believe that Ellen Brammar’s play, Modest, newly arrived in London from Hull Truck Theatre, succeeds or not, rather depends on your criteria for evaluating theatre. On storytelling, character development and nuance, it is two and a half...

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The Shape of Things, Park Theatre review - the shape of what, exactly?

It’s been more than 20 years since the premiere of The Shape of Things, Neil LaBute’s prickly drama about couples and friends and the ways we change each other. And boy, does it show. Director Nicky Allpress and a talented young cast try their best...

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Brainwashed review - the toxic impact of the 'male gaze' in film

The phrase “male gaze” was coined by the British film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1975 and has become a standard tool for analysing a film’s gendered content. What director Nina Menkes has set out to show in Brainwashed is that the techniques that...

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In the Middle review - the true grit of grassroots referees

In the Middle profiles 10 football officials who referee and run the line of lower-league games in south-west London and north-east Surrey. Pondering what drives these apparently sane individuals to do such an onerous job, director-producer Greg...

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