tue 19/03/2024

Wales

Uproar, Rafferty, Royal Welsh College, Cardiff review - a rare spring in the new music step

It’s not often one comes out of a concert of mainly new works with a spring in one’s step. A sigh of relief is rather more usual. But this concert on Thursday by the Welsh new music ensemble Uproar was an exception, partly but by no means...

Read more...

The Way, BBC One review - steeltown blues

This three-part drama arrives trailing clouds of big-byline glory. Michael Sheen directed and produced it (as well as making fleeting appearances on screen), James Graham wrote it and documentary-maker Adam Curtis co-produced it.But what is it? Part...

Read more...

Album: Gruff Rhys - Sadness Sets Me Free

Halfway through this album, “They Sold My Home to Build a Skyscraper” unlocks it. On first listen I’d been nodding along with the first few songs, enjoying how they find glimmers of more or less forlorn hope in amongst sadness and middle-aged...

Read more...

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Martin, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff review - a host of horns in the wild woods

There were a lot of horns on display in the BBC NOW’s latest concert in Cardiff’s Hoddinott Hall. Brahms’s Second Symphony has four of them, and so does the Elegy for Brahms that Parry wrote on hearing of Brahms’s death in 1897. Gavin Higgins’s Horn...

Read more...

The Eternal Daughter review - tricksy ghost story with a poignant emotional core

Joanna Hogg has made a film that resolves itself backwards: what happens in the final reel recasts what you have just seen completely. It’s something of a departure from her previous films in style, but equally probing and moving.The Eternal...

Read more...

Album: Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons - Kings of the Asylum

Three albums in, Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons have proved themselves a proposition to be reckoned with. A solid live draw, they’ve supported Guns N’ Roses amongst others, and made the album charts in mainland Europe.They may initially have...

Read more...

Wolf, BBC One review - a load of old...

Adapted by Megan Gallagher from one of Mo Hayder’s Jack Caffery novels (the seventh one, apparently), Wolf might be described as Welsh Gothic, spiced up with a splash of gratuitous sadism. Episode two, for instance, is titled merely “Torture”, which...

Read more...

First Person: tenor Elgan Llŷr Thomas on recording a queer-themed album

“No one makes money from CDs anymore”; “Remember, once it’s out there it’s out there forever”; “Everyone’s making recordings these days, it’s a very cluttered market”; “You’ll struggle to make a mark…”These are just some of the things uttered to me...

Read more...

Candide, Welsh National Opera review - vaut le voyage, just for the visual side

If you read the synopsis of Candide - which I strongly advise if you plan a visit to this new WNO production - you may well wonder how it will be possible to get through so much in so short a time. Voltaire’s novella is itself fairly short, but...

Read more...

Steeltown Murders, BBC One review - eloquent true-crime drama about tracking a serial killer 30 years on

The thought of yet another primetime true-crime series might weary the soul, even if it has been created by Ed Whitmore (Manhunt: Martin Clunes heading two cases as DI Colin Sutton), directed by Marc Evans (Hinterland: Wales’s contribution to modern...

Read more...

Blaze of Glory!, Welsh National Opera review - sparkling entertainment up the valleys

Like certain other opera companies, WNO has leant in recent years towards popular shows of one kind or another. In their case this is not mere pandering to the Valleys coach parties, but a genuine attempt to assert an identity through an exploration...

Read more...

Trouble in Butetown, Donmar Warehouse review - entertaining and warmhearted

With the fast-approaching anniversary of the latest war in Europe, our culture’s continued fascination with World War Two gets a contemporary boost from Trouble in Butetown at the Donmar Warehouse.Written by Diana Nneka Atuona, this follow-up to...

Read more...
Subscribe to Wales