Brighton
caspar.gomez
Kate Tempest's long blonde-brown hair flailed as she prowled the stage, red-faced from exertion, adhering not a jot to the media’s tick-boxes for femininity. She is smaller, by far, than her backing band, dressed down in baggy sweatshirt and jeans. Unlikely star material yet she exuded such energized passion and righteous charisma that, by the end, as she encored with a poem that, like so many tonight, seemed to allude to the troubling political developments of last week, she had the audience rapt, completely engaged. “We never saw it coming,” she announced towards the close, “like all the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The author of such inimitably evocative melancholia as “If All The Cornflakes” and the many episodes of “Life In A Scotch Sitting Room”, Scottish poet and songwriter Ivor Cutler had a stellar cult following for many decades until his death in 2006. This wonderfully fluid ensemble show, making its English debut at the Brighton Festival, was devised by Scottish group Vanishing Point in association with The National Theatre of Scotland. It recreates episodes from Cutler’s life, and fragments of his music in a mesmerising, dynamic collage of bleak-tinged fun. Cutler, who always claimed that his Read more ...
Nick Hasted
It’s a shock to see the Corn Exchange’s hundreds of seats sold out for a jazz piano trio. When I first heard GoGo Penguin two winters ago, it was in an East London basement, where new recruit Nick Blacka’s thunderous double-bass was inspiring a few intrepid dancers to their skittering beats, among a crowd of dozens. Since then, there’s been a Mercury nomination, and a recent three-album deal with America’s gold-standard jazz label, Blue Note, a remarkable achievement for a British band.It’s when they break from their own successful formula that GoGo Penguin are most interestingListening to Read more ...
Mark Sheerin
Thanks to its international festival and a thriving catalogue of fringe events, May brings a great deal of noise to Brighton. Putting artwork into this saturated landscape can never be easy. But Nathan Coley has managed to inject some critical thinking and reflectivity.HIs best-known works, quotations in illuminated text, blazon themselves on the mind. They occupy a tidy niche and reproduce well in books, magazines and social media updates. So when you first see his work here on the south coast, in an 11th-century church no less, you might for a moment get a sense that, were this not a cosy Read more ...
Nick Hasted
World War One poems can become too familiar. So can the war itself, its five years of centenary commemorations so far suffering from excessive patriotism, a sense of uncomprehending disconnection from the gone generation which lived it, and a politically expedient veil drawn over its holocaust, the Armenian genocide. The Lads In Their Hundreds combines contemporary English music and French war poetry unknown here to more intimately recall the time’s voices. As the poems’ performer, Tcheky Karyo, mentions in an after-show talk, some of them were written huddled over trench candlelight. They Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"I hear America singing," wrote Walt Whitman, the American poet whose language playwright Richard Nelson has co-opted for the title of the second (Sweet and Sad) of his remarkable quartet of Apple Family Plays. And those wanting to know what song is being sung in certain corners of liberal America right now should make every attempt to see any or all of these plays, whether on their continued European tour (Weisbaden and Vienna beckon) or perhaps on screen: their original Off Broadway stagings at New York's Public Theatre have been recorded for public television Stateside, and much the same Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Shami Chakrabarti pointed out early on that she is “grim and worthy” and that stand-up is not her strong suit. Despite this, svelte, petite and wearing a sharp back outfit, she acted as compere for an evening of literary “turns” celebrating Liberty, the human rights organization of which she is director. “Everyone loves human rights,” she joked at one point. “Their own. It’s other people's that are a bit more challenging.” It was a good line, but anyone here looking for kicks’n’giggles was very much in the wrong place. On Liberty proved something of a congratulatory end-of-Bank Holiday slap- Read more ...
Veronica Lee
A couple stand on the stage, squaring up to each other. They are in the middle of an argument. The Man has just, out of the blue, suggested they have a baby. The Woman, understandably, needs time to adjust to the idea. Particularly as they are in IKEA. In the checkout queue. So starts Duncan Macmillan's very funny and touching two-hander about the disintegration of a relationship.In 70 tightly packed minutes we see their coupledom move from that engaging first scene, through arguments, lovemaking, failed pregnancy, the possibility of adoption and much more. The couple's initial debate about Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Squarepusher, AKA Tom Jenkinson (b. 1975) is a groundbreaking electronic musician. Growing up in Essex, he first came to prominence in the mid-Nineties alongside Aphex Twin, with whom he worked extensively, amid a milieu of post-rave experimentalists exploring the wilder fringes of club-based sounds. Signing to Warp Records in 1995 he has maintained a position at the forefront of electronica, releasing 16 albums, the latest being Damogen Furies. His output has always been untrammelled by fads or trends and, while he’s often returned to a core jazz-funk flavour, his music has tapped into Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Andrew Comben, CEO of the Brighton Festival, chooses ten locations that have resonance with the annual event. He talks about their past and future but, most particularly, what will be happening this May“Brighton Festival is all about the spaces and people of the city,” he explains, “Some of these spaces are especially evocative. They make artists think about doing things in different ways and make audiences respond accordingly. We have to strategise, sometimes taking over places that are used for other things most of the time. It’s always an adventure.”Comben, 40, became the Festival's Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Richard Nelson (b. 1950) is a leading figure in American theatre but also a consistent documentarian of his country’s liberal consciousness. His series of plays about the Apple Family, written between 2010 and 2013, have been critically acclaimed for their portrayal of the upstate New York clan’s gatherings on significant historical days. They are performed for the first time in the UK at the Brighton Festival in May.Nelson’s career, however, began in the mid-Seventies with his profile coming to wider attention the following decade as he worked alongside theatre directors such as Britain’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Prize-winning author and Brighton Festival Guest Director Ali Smith can barely keep still. She wriggles about in her seat before an audience of journalists at Brighton’s Dome Studio Theatre, gesturing around with unabashed enthusiasm. Sat beside her is Festival CEO Andrew Comben whose job it is to bring this supposedly self-effacing writer out of herself. Today she doesn’t need much coaxing. When asked if it was exciting putting the programme together she breathlessly announces, “I’m still reeling,” as gleeful as a child let loose in a toyshop.A yellow bird silhouetted on a map of Brighton Read more ...