London
Bernard Hughes
Connaught Brass is a quintet of twenty-something players rapidly establishing an enviable reputation, and on the evidence of what I heard yesterday that reputation is fully deserved: they really are superbly good. A well-stuffed Milton Court spoke to their pulling power even in the face of terrible weather, and their easy stage manner and mostly successful repertoire choices made for an enjoyable evening hiding from the elements.Although billed as a Christmas show, there was a minority of seasonal items, even if you stretch a point and include Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé. But there was a Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Growing up within a few hundred yards of a major dock, I hardly knew darkness or quiet – the first time I properly felt their terrible beauty was on the Isle of Man ferry in the middle of the Irish Sea, its voids still vivid half a century on. Only a couple of years or so later, I was alone (friends must have left early) and had miscalculated the time required to walk back from the sandhills of Freshfield Beach to the railway station, 20 minutes or so away. Within the briefest of windows, the familiar woods – friendly with the smell of pine and the cuddly toy-like red squirrels Read more ...
graham.rickson
That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in 1972, the producers fired two directors (Bryan Forbes and Don Taylor) in succession before hiring Richard Lester in desperation. His quest to salvage Juggernaut in a just a few weeks mirrors events in the film, its protagonists attempting to defuse a set of bombs planted in the bowels of a transatlantic liner.Lester’s masterstroke was to call in Alan Plater to help him rewrite the original script, the end result as much a political thriller as a disaster movie, following Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Percy Jackson is neither the missing one from Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael, nor an Australian Test cricketer of the 1920s, but a New York teenager with dyslexia and ADHD who keeps getting expelled from school. He’s a bit of a loner, too intense to huddle with the geeks, too stubborn to avoid the fights with the jocks, and his mother won’t tell him anything about his absent father. Who turns out to be a Greek god. Could happen to any kid. It’s that blend of familiar anxieties and fantastical backstory that propelled Rick Riordan’s bedtime stories into novels, films, Read more ...
Tim Cumming
November can be a month to hunker down for the onset of winter and its weather, and where better to do that than in one of the myriad venues across the capital hosting the annual London Jazz Festival and its hundreds of concerts, from cosy clubs like Ronnie Scott’s and Pizza Express Dean Street to the big stages of the Barbican and South Bank.This review focuses on a trio of outliers from across the jazz cosmos – new band No Noise from Korea; the return of the propulsive, cinematic, muscular and sinuous grooves of Neil Cowley Trio, with a new album, Entity, after seven years away, and Read more ...
Gary Naylor
"All’s well that ends well". Sounds like the kind of phrase a guilty parent says to a disappointed child after they’ve been caught in a white lie and bought them a bag of sweets to smooth things over. It’s a saying that betokens bad behaviour, a need to sweep things under the carpet, portending a fresh start. There’s an edge of power in it too, implying that the speaker can now define their interlocutor’s feelings. In short, it’s ugly.So too is the play of the same name, a soi disant "problem play", Shakespeare at his more mean-spirited, sometimes giving the impression of indulging in a bit Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Cleveland is probably the American city most like the one in which I grew up. Early into the icy embrace of post-industrialisation, not really on the way to anywhere, but not a destination either and obsessed with popular music and sports, it's very Scouse. Okay, the Mersey did not catch fire as the Cuyahoga River did in 1969, but it would not have surprised anyone in Liverpool had it done so.So it’s almost inevitable that Matt (Sam Mitchell) and Shawn (Enyi Okoronkwo) (pictured below) are like the lads with whom I grew up – okay, they’re like me, I’ll admit it. They bond over their NBA Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Not just a backstage musical, a backroom musical!In the 70s, Follies and A Chorus Line took us into the rehearsal room giving us a chance to look under the bonnet to see the cogs of the Musical Theatre machine bump and grind as a show gets on its feet. But what of the other room, the writers’ room, where the ideas emerge mistily and the egos clang in conflict? [title of show] pulls back the curtain behind the curtain, behind the curtain.“More meta?” I hear you ask, a little wince in the voice. But, rather than an exercise in smartypants critiquing of cultural production from the inside-out ( Read more ...
mark.kidel
Kenny Barron, revered as the best jazz pianist around, is a perfect gentleman and a master of “cool” – a quality once described in great depth by the American Africanist Robert Farris Thompson, in an article originally published in African Arts in 1973.The term has today lost most of its original meaning. It evokes the ability to be totally present without showing off, to do more with less, and to evoke a kind of spiritual purity and healing. In Yoruba culture, as the New York priest John Mason once told me, the cool is the domain of the god Obatala, the one who tempers with judgment rather Read more ...
mark.kidel
Will Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour ever come to an end? Two years on from the last UK tour, he’s returned, with substantially the same band, once again mostly featuring material from his brilliant album Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He’s a little less steady on his feet, but remains as present as ever, clearly enjoying being on stage and contact with an audience that welcomes him with love as well as uncritical adulation.There is a routine: he mostly starts out standing beside Tony Garnier, his wonderfully supple root of a bass player, with a handheld mic, but not for long. He soon moves over Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Cryptocurrency is like the myth of El Dorado – a promised land made of fool’s gold. Despite its liberatory potential, it frequently attracts sharks or, as the title of Beru Tessema’s new play indicates, hungry wolves that gobble up defenceless sheep.After the success here of his 2022 play, House of Ife, the playwright returns to the Bush Theatre with a subject which is original and a cast which includes a cameo by Jamael Westman, star veteran of the original West End production of Hamilton. This time, however, some slack plotting and predictable consequences undermine the drama of a slightly Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Mac is in prison for a long stretch. He is calm, contemplative almost, understands how to do his time and has only one rule – nobody, cellmate or guard, can touch the photo of his daughter, then three years old, attached to his wall. Though he is a man who gets through the days with few problems, he solves them through violence. On his release, his only wish is to find the daughter who will have forgotten him. Scratch (spiritual sister of Maxine in the playwright's 2022 monologue, Wolf Cub) is a wild child. With no mother (we soon guess why) and a father inside, she grows up in care Read more ...