Reviews
Claudia Bull
Joanna Pocock’s second full-length book, Greyhound, tells the story of a single journey made and remade. In 2006, after the death of her sister and several miscarriages, Pocock travelled 2,300 miles from Detroit to Los Angeles by bus. She replicates the trip seventeen years later, curious to see how the States have changed and hoping to catch sight of her former self: “A ragged person running away from loss.”Greyhound synthesises the two trips and represents a blend of aims and genres typical of Fitzcarraldo’s non-fiction list: part memoir, part reportage; a polemic on environmental vandalism Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Joe Orton was a merry prankster. His main work – such as Loot (1965) and What the Butler Saw (1969) – was provocative, taboo-tickling and often wildly hilarious. Now the Young Vic is staging a revival of his debut, Entertaining Mr Sloane, directed by this venue’s new supremo Nadia Fall, and starring celebrity polymath Jordan Stephens. But does 1960s provocation still resonate today?Well yes and well, no. While this play still has the ability, sporadically, to disturb, the passing of time also means that some of Orton’s attitudes have not aged well. So even Read more ...
Robert Beale
Rachel Helleur-Simcock’s first appearance with the Hallé after appointment as leader of its cello section was auspicious – she became the soloist in their performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in the season’s opening concert at the Bridgewater Hall (Truls Mørk having had to withdraw).After 16 years with the Berlin Philharmonic, she’s come to the Manchester orchestra. No stranger to the concerto’s solo role, she brought a highly lyrical, sweetly sorrowful voice to it that made this performance, conducted by the Hallé’s gifted young maestro, Kahchun Wong, one of the most affecting I’ve heard. Read more ...
Gary Naylor
About halfway through this world premiere, I realised what was missing. Where is the sinister lift, where are the long corridors and, most of all, WHERE IS MR. MILCHICK? 50 First Dates: The Musical may indeed be the sunnier cousin of Severance, but it’s also much older, tracing its roots back to the mid-hit movie of the same name.You could be forgiven for having forgotten that 2004 Drew Barrymore / Adam Sandler romcom, but writers, David Rossmer and Steve Rosen and director/choreographer, Casey Nicholaw, hadn’t. Fast forward and, like so much else just now, what was born in a pandemic Read more ...
David Nice
Forget Anna Netrebko, if you ever gave the Russian Scarpia’s former cultural ambassador much thought (theartsdesk wouldn’t). It should be uphill from now on as Aleksandra Kurzak takes over the role of a diva out of her depth. Last night, though, she was unwell, and the role was taken by Ailyn Pérez, a lyric soprano who knows how to pull out all the right stops and whose dramatic truth complemented Oliver Mears’ production to perfection, presumably on little rehearsal time.Mears plays mostly by the Puccini/Giacosa/Illica rulebook of love and terror in totalitarian Rome - foolish the director Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
It was the absence of performing animals that defined it in the 1980s, but contemporary circus has come a long way since. Cirque Éloize, a smallish touring company which started in Montreal in the late 90s, has so effectively dissolved the boundaries between dance, acrobatics and theatre that it performs around the world under any or all of those banners. Its current tour to UK theatres offers urban attitude, breakdance and hip hop along with aerial skills, trampolining and trick cycling – often hair-raisingly at the same time. Perhaps it was inevitable. Street dance and acrobatics share a Read more ...
Heather Neill
The word "after" can be elastic when a modern writer is inspired by a classic. Nima Taleghani here stretches it to breaking point, although, to be fair his piece is also described as a new play. It is not so much "after" Euripides as a celebration of theatre with frequent sideways reference - mostly knowing and comic - to The Bacchae.In many ways this is the perfect play for the beginning of a new era at the National. The origins of Western theatre are acknowledged in the choice of a Greek classic, played in the Olivier auditorium, itself inspired by Greek amphitheatres. And yet it throbs Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Fifth time around, Slow Horses continues to show the rest of the field a clean pair of heels. Or hooves. The adventures of Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his peculiar little band of secret service misfits have come to exert a fierce stranglehold on the viewing public. Horses must be perilously close to being officially declared a cult.Anyway, this fifth series is derived from Mick Herron’s novel London Rules, and the specific London-ness of the show continues to be an indispensable component in its success. Where TV drama often fakes up a fictional not-quite-anywhereland, Horses remains Read more ...
Gary Naylor
The impact of great art is physical as much as it is psychological. I recall the first time I saw Perry Henzell’s 1972 film, The Harder They Come. I’d been in the pub and, as we did then with just four channels, slumped in front of the television to see what was on late on a Friday night. Within minutes, I was sitting up straight, seeing an exotic, other world unfold before me in a genre I couldn’t place (was it documentary or drama?) and a performance, by Jimmy Cliff, that reached across time and space with an urgent charisma. It wasn’t the last physical surprise the work held for me – more Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Royal Northern College of Music was in celebratory mood last night for the opening of its new season, in a joint promotion with Manchester Camerata that marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the RNCM’s Junior Fellowship programme.For Benjamin Huth, it was his final performance as the 2024/25 Mills Williams Junior Fellow in Conducting, and with him were three soloists moving on from their time on the RNCM International Artists Diploma, the highest performance accolade the college offers. What better way for a violinist, cellist and pianist to celebrate together than in Beethoven’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Helix” is the ninth track on portals//polarities. With this dramatic, acid house-leaning slab of shoegazing-infused electropop, Night Tapes make the case that they’re the real deal.Up to this point, their pop-inclined electronica has embraced motorik (opening track “Enter”), breakbeat-infused chillwave (“Television”), vaporous quasi-new wave pop (“Swordsman”) and trip-hop (“Babygirl (Like No1 Else”). With so much going on stylistically, it is tough getting a handle on Night Tapes.The trio are Max Doohan, Sam Richards and Iiris Vesik. Their material is jointly composed, though main vocalist Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Scripted by Belfast-born playwright David Ireland, Coldwater is a smart and addictive thriller, which manages to squeeze some fresh twists out of its murderous narrative. It also benefits hugely from an excellent cast firing on all cylinders, while also reaping the benefits of its Scottish rural locations.But our story begins in London, where the anti-hero, John (Andrew Lincoln), suffers a traumatic event at the local school playground. He watches a woman being violently assaulted by a raging maniac, but can’t bring himself to rush to her rescue. Instead he freezes, panics, and then runs away Read more ...