Reviews
David Nice
Ever been stuck in a claustrophobic space with a group of really unpleasant people? Add mayhem, murder and the kind of razor-sharp wit to be found in only a very few of the nastiest individuals, and you have Dominic Dromgoole’s candlelit production of Middleton and Rowley’s satirical Jacobean nightmare, The Changeling.That wit is what truly distinguishes this strange experience. The bizarre plot wherein an unwanted suitor and a maidservant are horribly dispatched and lunatics mocked could be more genuinely disturbing in a gritty update, but this fine ensemble of actors in period costume Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Latvia likes to be different. At least that’s the message they sent out with the cultural programme marking the start of the country’s presidency of the Council of the European Union. Pomp and circumstance were out, and instead we got a Cage-inspired happening, an audio/visual presentation that was many things: part video installation, part performance art. The only thing you couldn’t describe it as was a choral concert.Production values were high, reflecting perhaps the diplomatic motivations. Above the stage was positioned a frame incorporating four huge screens in a rectangular formation, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The future is a bad place. Most of our predictions about climate change and the world’s resources seem to come from a mindset of mute despair. In New Atlantis – part of the Enlightenment Café series produced by LAStheatre, which brings together artists, scientists and thinkers as well as theatre-makers – the future is also dry. Very dry. Water scarcity on a global scale means that the population of Miami has abandoned the city and the people of London are suffering a drought-ridden existence.Set in 2050, the play explores our relationship to water by creating an intergovernmental Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Part of a series of programmes marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, The Eichmann Show was a 90-minute account of how the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the SS's most enthusiastic engineers of the Holocaust, became "the world's first ever global documentary series". The key men in making this happen were TV producer Milton Fruchtman and renowned documentary director Leo Hurwitz, the latter a victim of McCarthy-era blacklisting in the USA.It was a potentially interesting idea, but the notion of presenting the trial of one of the most heinous Nazi war criminals – Read more ...
geoff brown
The mixed grilled school of programme-making is not for the JACK Quartet. Contemporary, contemporary, and contemporary: that was the bill of fare last night at this challenging recital offered by the young American group, graduates of the Eastman School of Music, who derive their capitalised title from the initial letters of the members’ first names. Like the Arditti String Quartet, one of their mentors, you’d never find them playing Schubert. Even someone as gutsy and game-changing as Beethoven appears to be well off the menu. A pity, in a way. For the three knotty pieces Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Beyond being a portrait of a day in the life of French national broadcaster Radio France, it is hard to work out what La Maison de la Radio might be about. There is nothing about what the institution is meant to be for, little hinting at the attitudes defining the content aired and a lack of context for the people seen on screen. No one is specifically identified by name or role, and the nature of what is in production or being broadcast is hard to determine. Language and local concerns like the Tour de France aside, La Maison de la Radio could be a compilation of footage of any public Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Sometimes the deadliest violence is silent. The publicity for Caroline Horton’s new absurdist satire, Islands, points out that Oxfam estimates that some $18.5 trillion is siphoned out of the world economy into tax havens by wealthy individuals. That’s some nest egg! Likewise, Christian Aid has calculated that 1,000 children die every day as a result of tax evasion. As we know, the super-rich one per cent own most of global wealth. Dreadful. Clearly unjust. But what can theatre do about it?Well, until recently, the most common tactic was verbatim theatre – as in David Hare’s The Power of Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There’s a tricky balancing act involved when writing a sitcom. Too much "sit" and you’re in danger of losing the laughs, too much "com" and it becomes increasingly difficult to find the space to land a serious dramatic punch. Get one of these things wrong and, like a fat man facing a baby on a see-saw, it looks all wrong and is no fun for anyone. Catastrophe, Channel 4’s new sitcom, written by and starring Sharon Horgan (Pulling, Dead Boss) and US stand-up Rob Delaney (Burning Love), approaches this dilemma with a classic love story: girl meets boy, girl gets pregnant, both try to work out Read more ...
Russ Coffey
After three albums the question remains: is Die Antwoord more than a just a clever joke or is the act simply a caricature of South Africa’s trashy “Zef”-side? The guys and gal behind "Ninja and Yo-landi Vi$$er" are in no doubt – they claim to be “conceptual artists”. And many fans agree, saying that besides the posturing lie some real cultural truths. Last night three or so thousand descended on Brixton to make up their own minds.As I arrive the crowd is evenly split between hipsters, ravers and students. Fragments of conversation reveal the thought they have given to the band. The lad next Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Radio Birdman: Radio BirdmanLike Magma, last week’s stars of theartsdesk’s reissues weekly, Australia’s similarly black-clad Radio Birdman favoured a uniform look. And also in common with the idiosyncratic French combo, they had a logo – an ominous, diamond-shaped, red and black symbol chosen for the cover of this box set over an image of the band. Instead of wearing their logo as pendants like Magma, Radio Birdman sported it on arm bands.There’s no musical similarity between Magma and Radio Birdman, but both sought to portray themselves as united, as if by a cause, and apart from Read more ...
Matt Wolf
If proof were needed that war exists in some quarters as an excuse for beautiful images, along comes this screen account of Vera Brittain's celebrated 1933 memoir Testament of Youth to offer up prettified pain in abundance alongside some fine performances that do what they can to break through the prevailing gloss. First-time feature director James Kent's film can be seen as the converse to something like, say, the awful Unbroken, which rubs our noses almost fetishistically in suffering and torture. But surely some sort of possible middle ground exists whereby this fascinating story could Read more ...
David Nice
Was 1911 the best ever year for music? Works premiered or composed then include Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and the Tenth Symphony he’d completed in outline by the time of his death that May, Sibelius’s most austere masterpiece, the Fourth – for which the little oddity which opened last night’s concert, The Dryad, sounded like a sketch – and Nielsen’s Third, self-subtitled “Espansiva” but in this performance more like the “Inexhaustible” to blaze a path for the “Inextingishuable” Fourth. Even Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto of 1909, Read more ...