Reviews
David Nice
Had you been at John Wilson's Respighi spectacular on Friday, or heard it on BBC Radio 3/watched it on BBC Four, you might have perceived last night's journey up and down Richard Strauss's Bavarian alp as an extension of Albert Hall possibilities, complete with vast orchestra, offstage bands and full-blaze organ. While Wilson skilfully ran the gamut from ferocious blazes to the subtlest watercolour sketches, Edward Gardner encouraged the London Philharmonic Orchestra to go deep beneath the surface of Eine Alpensinfonie and takes its time in the long lines admiring the wonder of nature. Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Growing up in Liverpool, it’s usually not long before you visit the vast golden sands of Prestatyn, still the best beach I’ve ever seen, and the dubious arcades of Rhyl to roll a penny between the lines. Your accent and age announces you as someone to be watched - not without cause, most of the time - and you wonder how the locals can tell, as they seem to have the same one anyway.Not long after, as a Scouser, you’ll hear of a lost underwater city, well, village, the local Atlantis. Nearly 150 years ago, the then thriving city of Liverpool decided that it liked the super soft Welsh Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The air is thick with theatrical smog… then comes prolonged darkness. Gradually, a dull glimmer of warm light reveals a tangle of limbs moving slowly like the coils of a giant serpent undulating in deep water. As the light slowly increases, a cluster of beings emerges from the gloom moving in oily undulations like tormented souls roiling in the depths of hell. Occasionally they form into brief tableaux, and I’m reminded of The Raft of the Medusa (1819), an apocalyptic painting of a tragic shipwreck by Théodore Géricault, and also of paintings of downtrodden workers by the likes of Read more ...
David Nice
Forget Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with bells, cannons and military bands (most people have, but it was my introduction to the Albert Hall as a child). Respighi's raucous festivals, sparkling fountains and various pines of Rome are where the real spectacular action is, with more music and poetry than Tchaikovsky found in that occasional piece. Who better than John Wilson and his superorchestra Sinfonia of London to urge the cavalcades and weave the magic in the ultimate Proms blockbuster? Surprisingly, it's not the first time the tall and massive order of all three sets of symphonic Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
E Jean Carroll is the all-American modern woman: Miss Cheerleader USA 1964, gonzo journalist, TV counsellor, glossy magazine agony aunt and, latterly, the victor in two civil suits against Donald J Trump. Currently he owes her almost $83 million. Ivy Meeropol’s documentary also shows the price Carroll has had to pay for her choices.Why did this woman in her late seventies decide to sue, 30 years after the assault? The documentary goes a long way towards answering that question, though essentially the answer is that Trump repeatedly defamed her after she made allegations of rape against him in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Based on the novel by Marissa Stapley and telly-ised by screenwriter/creator Jonathan Tropper, Lucky is a rip-roaring tale of dysfunctional criminal families, enlivened by a batch of splendid performances from an excellent cast. Front and centre is Lucky herself (full name Luciana Armstrong), a compulsive thief and skilled con artist, played quite brilliantly by Anya Taylor-Joy.As it happens, Lucky is the daughter of another inveterate criminal, her father John Armstrong, and as we see in various flashbacks, she was (as Joni Mitchell put it) raised on robbery. As she admits, her situation is Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
It was evident from Citizen’s debut album Youth that they had an edge. “The Night I Drove Alone” contributed to a thriving music scene predicated on the same raw emotion that it captured, but there was a timelessness to it that felt special. Since then, the staggering musical talent of Citizen has become more and more apparent with each album they have released, and Halcyon Blues is no exception.This album would in fact be a perfectly acceptable place to start for anyone who is still missing out. Opening track “Good Fortune” immediately invites you to sit next to them before they Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Tom Holland is 30 now, and after a decade in the role his boyish Spider-Man muscularly comes of age in this fourth solo outing. A montage of street-level NYC crime-fighting sums up his activities since Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), when Peter Parker’s unmasking and the collateral damage of Aunt May’s death caused Dr Strange to magically wipe public knowledge of his secret identity, protecting loved ones such as girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) only by sacrificing that love’s existence.It’s a classic sf quandary which this latest instalment relishes working through. Parker has let himself be absorbed Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“She said her life was like a motorway… dull, grey, and long.” The lyrics of “Like a Motorway,” from Saint Etienne’s February 1994 album Tiger Bay see the titular highway negatively, signifying a life defined by a prolonged drabness.Saint Etienne released their final album, International, last September. By that point, Bob Stanley, one third of the band, was already bedded-in as an author. He has also been behind a series of concept compilations. Rather than being devoted to a genre or style – maybe acid folk or Belgian popcorn – they aim to bring to mind a situation, a setting, particular Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
What can you do with lots of big sheets of white paper, three rolls of Sellotape and a couple of torches? These are items from the “props incident room”, as he would call it, of Phelim McDermott’s workshop. With them, and the other workshop that is his fertile imagination, he has conjured up a very special show.It was originally to have been a collaboration with the leading minimalist composer Philip Glass at the piano, but his health problems wouldn’t allow him to appear. So McDermott, the man who staged Glass’s Satyagraha and Akhnaten for English National Opera, had to rethink the piece. Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Attending the tale of Sweeney Todd was my introduction to musical theatre. I was in my early 20s and a friend of mine had invited me to the summer show at Guildford School of Acting and Dance. Reluctantly, I went along, fearing jazz hands, happy talk and an overdose of The Kids From Fame. I was much too cool for that – or so I pretended.I could hardly believe what I saw. So much of The Macabre that I had grown up with was there being sung by characters unrepentant in their violence and mendacity. My mother was a very enthusiastic reader of fairytales as bedtime stories and, not much later, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Is this the near-future? The premise of Ann Droid is that in place of our over-stretched social services, before long we may find ourselves being helped out around the home by robot assistants. This is what happens to our protagonist Sue (Sue Johnston), devastated by the death of her husband Dave two years earlier and fearful of growing progressively older and lonelier. She also suffers from low blood pressure and is liable to collapse without warning.It’s her son Michael (Paul Ready, pictured below with Johnston) who acquires a second-hand – or, if you will, “pre-loved” – droid at a bargain Read more ...