Reviews
Adam Sweeting
The return of this entertaining political drama is always welcome, though its soap-tinged mix of transatlantic politics and volatile personal relationships is beginning to look a little too genteel for our current age of ever-worsening crises.In the real world we have Trump on the rampage, the Middle East liable to blow at any moment and China surreptitiously taking over the world, but somehow The Diplomat is still fussing over the terrorist attack on a British aircraft carrier, HMS Courageous, that happened way back at the beginning of Season One. Delightfully, the show never stops believing Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
To hear Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason speaking live is to hear a woman who very much recognises that her lifelong mission to challenge the perception of who should play classical music is ongoing. Though she has given birth to seven children who have gone on to be stand out classical musicians, she knows that there are still those who deny them the recognition they deserve because of the colour of their skin.The complete failure of certain individuals to understand Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s statement last year that "Rule, Britannia!" at the Proms – with its references to slavery – might make people Read more ...
Justine Elias
Another day, another shooting: this is Florida, USA, where the "Stand Your Ground" self-defence law allows people to use lethal force when they perceive a threat to their lives. The idea may be shocking to Britons, but such laws have become prevalent in America, even though they may be providing cover for straight-up murder.In The Perfect Neighbor, which won the top documentary prize for director Geeta Gandhir at the Sundance Film Festival this year, a minor dispute turns deadly. The film unfolds through found footage, mostly through police body cam video and courtroom coverage, but this isn' Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Bryony Kimmings’ new show – her first in five years – was created to celebrate the opening of Soho Walthamstow, the previously neglected Art Deco beauty that’s now one of London’s shiniest venues. She uses every bit of its vast stage to great effect and even manages to get a chunk of the audience on it for its witty epilogue, of which more later.In Bogwitch – part comedy, part theatre, part performance – Kimmings recounts a year in her life after she and her new partner moved out of London with their blended family to a rundown cottage in the sticks, where they will live off the Read more ...
Robert Beale
Phyllida Lloyd’s production of La Bohème for Opera North is over 32 years old but still feels young. And for its audiences it still has the ability to capture – as the opera is designed to – the experience of youthful love and separation, its ecstasy and its heartbreak.It's set in the 1950s or early 1960s, rather than the 19th century. But in some respects it takes its cue from the stories that Puccini and his collaborators used as their source material, Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème, and the format they created from them. What we see are literally scenes – tableaux – with Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Many orchestral concerts leaven two or three established classics with something new or unusual. The LSO reversed that formula at the Barbican last night, with three pieces written since 2000 offset by just one familiar item, Sibelius’s Third Symphony. The result was invigorating, challenging – and very enjoyable.The presiding artistic mind was that of Thomas Adès, featuring both as conductor and composer. His passion for the music he had chosen shone through, overcoming the rough-and-readiness of his baton technique, and his enthusiasm brought forth a range of sounds from the orchestra Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Guillermo del Toro strains every sinew to bring his dream film to life, steeping it in religious symbolism and the history of art, cannily restitching Mary Shelley’s narrative and aiming grandly high. He can’t sustain Frankenstein’s heartbeat over two-and-a-half hours which try to justify a lifetime’s devotion to the subject. There are, though, marvellous passages where the ages of reason and magic meet.We begin in Arctic wastes, where an icebound ship encounters broken Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and his seemingly bestial Creature (Jacob Elordi). Each tells their tale. Young Victor ( Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Their new album may have been born out of a deep dive into Quentin Tarantino’s cinematic reimagining of the post-Manson killings’ atmosphere of late 1960’s Los Angeles, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. However, Solar Eye’s intro music as they took the stage at the Hare and Hounds this weekend wasn’t Charlie’s “Look at your Game, Girl” or “Cease to Exist” but something far more triumphant – the theme from Rocky.Still, these local boys are making good right at this moment, and clearly in a celebratory mood, with the recent release of their sophomore album Live Freaky! Die Freaky! and a handful of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It’s always good to welcome the opening of a new arts venue, and sadly it doesn’t happen too often in the current economic climate. But bucking the trend is The Free Association, an improv comedy troupe who have been plying their trade in various upstairs rooms in pubs for several years and have now found a permanent base in southeast London.The FA was founded 11 years ago by Graham Dickson, Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez (the latter two who perform as Max and Ivan) and as well as performing it the company teaches improv – both to comics and non-professionals. Alumni of FA classes include Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Helping to build the careers of superb young singers is what Wigmore Hall has done for decades: I still remember Olaf Bär’s debut in the hall in 1983, having won the Walther Gruner Lieder competition, and also Matthias Goerne’s in 1997.But whereas Bär was 25 and Goerne 27 when they first appeared in Wigmore Street, Austrian mezzo-soprano Anja Mittermüller was not yet 21 when she won the Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition last year. She has recently turned 22, and still has another year left as a student in Hanover.Hearing her remarkable Wigmore debut recital at the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Over 1965 to 1968 Brooklyn's Evie Sands issued a string of singles with classic top sides. Amongst them were “Take Me For a Little While,” “I Can't Let Go,” “Picture me Gone” and “Angel of the Morning.” For reasons which are tackled in the essay coming with I Can’t Let Go – the first-ever collection of Sands’ seven-inch A- and B-sides – all either charted low, or not at all.This is extraordinary and, from the perspective of 60-ish years later, inexplicable. These were fabulous soul-inclined pop records, and fabulous songs – as recognised by the extensive assortment of other, subsequent Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
No Other ChoicePark Chan-wook’s outstanding black comedy is a rare treat, biting social satire delivered with immaculate slapstick touches. His everyman hero is Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a jittery but deliriously happy man with a beautiful wife (superstar Son Ye-jin) and two children, one an accomplished cellist. Even his two dogs are handsome. And he loves his work at a paper manufacturer. Naturally, all comes crashing down when his company is taken over by Americans and a chunk of the workforce has to go, including him. As do his dogs, his nice car and many of his belongings. With his Read more ...