London
Gary Naylor
That Shakespeare speaks to his audiences anew with every production is a cliché, but, like so many such, the glib blandness of the assertion conceals an insistent truth. The Thane of Glamis has had some success in life, gains preferment from those who really should have seen through his shallowness and vaulting ambition – he even says the phrase himself – and achieves power without really knowing what to do with it. The crown not only justifies the means of his ascension up the slippery pole, but its preservation becomes the sole object of his every deed. History does not record if Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Yuja Wang and Klaus Mäkelä, two of the classical world’s biggest hitters, have recently united to make that even more powerful item, the “power couple”. But much as they are both photogenic and charismatic, their reputations are also based on musical excellence, as was on display at last night’s sizzling Prom.But far from wallowing in romantic excess, they gave a reading of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini that was refreshingly no-nonsense in its approach, nimble, mercurial and the opposite of self-indulgent.Wang’s playing had momentum from its very opening, which never sat back Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
It stunned me to discover that last night was only the sixth time Carmina Burana had been heard at the Proms. It seems tailor-made for the festival: large-scale and bombastic in a way that fits the proportions of the Albert Hall, familiar to occasional concert-goers but with much more to it than the "famous bit". And in this performance the CBSO and an array of choirs went at it with gusto, raising the audience to its feet at the end. Carmina Burana may be an utterly manipulative piece – knowing the buttons to press and pressing them shamelessly – but it is a pleasure sometimes to be Read more ...
Gary Naylor
At first, it’s hard to believe that the true story of Colonel Blood’s audacious attempt to steal The Crown Jewels from the Tower of London in 1671 has not provided the basis for a play before. After two hours of Simon Nye’s pedestrian telling of the tale as a comedy, you have your answer.We open on a lover of the King who regales us in song – since it’s Carrie Hope Fletcher (this production is not short of star quality), we can forgive the tinny piped-in music and enjoy her tremendous singing voice. The character returns a couple of times but (and this is a recurring theme in a Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A new theatre? In 2023? Now there’s a shot in the arm for the post-pandemic gloom. But there’s no business like show business – not for Mayfield Lavender anyway, who have found a corner of one of their beautiful purple fields and built an outdoor theatre for the poor, neglected souls of er… Epsom – but any investment in arts is surely welcome in these most philistine of times. Co-founded by Artistic Director Joe McNeice and Executive Director Brendan Maye, the space is still a little rough and ready at the moment and its vast stage may need a little reconfiguring unless budgets Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The shadow of Grenfell Tower has already produced Nick Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor’s dispassionately forensic but devastating documentary plays based on transcripts from the Grenfell Inquiry. Now comes a companion piece, the National’s Grenfell, a verbatim play using excerpts from the same source, but larded by Gillian Slovo into a wider account of the fire by those who were in it, to equally wrenching effect.The cast of 12 arrive in the National’s small Dorfman space and one by one introduce themselves: first by their own names, then as the main character they will play (all take on a Read more ...
mark.kidel
As a child, Anselm Kiefer tells us, in a bombed out German city, he would play in the rubble, creating life out of ruin and destruction. As an artist who is remarkably consistent, without being predictable, he continues to play in the ruins, breathing new life into the detritus of the world as well as his own collection of found objects, waste materials and other elements from which life appears to have been sucked out by time and history.Kiefer’s latest exhibition at the White Cube Bermondsey, a space with which he’s developed an intimate relationship, is inspired by James Joyce’s Finnegans Read more ...
joe.muggs
The broken beat movement, centred on West London around the turn of the millennium, wasn’t super press friendly. Its complex rhythms were eclipsed in the populism stakes by its close cousin UK garage, and serious commentators didn’t really know what to do with a broadly working class, multicultural scene that was aspirational and privileged virtuosic production and musicianship. Indeed there was a distinct inverted snobbery in the refusal refusal to treat it with the respect afforded other electronic music which fit into a scholarly vs “street” dichotomy.The movement itself, which could Read more ...
Gary Naylor
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 hours that goes nowhere. On representation, audience appeal and addressing past injustices, well, the reaction in the house to this Middle Child and Milk Presents collaboration will confirm that the job is done.Elizabeth Thompson’s The Roll Call was the sensation of the Royal Academy’s 1874 Summer Exhibition. Owing something to Gustave Courbet and Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Can things change, or must they always stay the same? The latest history play by Jack Thorne, a man of the moment whose Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is still in the West End and whose National Theatre hit The Motive and the Cue will transfer in December, revisits the early history of the BBC to show how current tensions between public service impartiality and political expediency have a long backstory.With a title that evokes the past, When Winston Went to War with the Wireless is a lively play of ideas that sits comfortably in the Donmar Warehouse’s intimate surroundings. But is this Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Much of cricket comprises waiting – you wait on the boundary to hear news of the toss, you wait your turn to bat, you heed the call of your batting partner to wait to see if a run is on, you wait for the rain to stop. A friend once told me that he played cricket in order to make the rest of his life seem more interesting. There is something in that observation that would appeal to both principals in this play for sure.Two men bicker on the boundary as they wait their turn to bat. In at five and six, one is keeping score (and "working the telegraph", as cricket’s arcane argot has it), while Read more ...
Gary Naylor
After the pantos, the movies (epic, camp and animated) and the television series, is there anything new to be mined in the story of Robin Hood? Probably not, as this messy, misjudged show takes that hope and fires an arrow through its heart.We’re in an Albion of misty woods, mighty castles and feudal exploitation, the King weakened by poison administered by his right hand man, Sheriff Baldwyn, whose day job is brutally extracting taxes from the peasants to build a new road for the barons (Shaun Yusuf McKee, Simon Oskarsson and TJ Holmes pictured below). He doesn’t have it all his own way: Read more ...