Reviews
Kieron Tyler
It took two minutes for Jonathan Wilson to launch into the first of the evening’s extended guitar solos. “Love Strong” began like much of his two-hours-ten-minutes on stage. The song opened with him singing a verse and then flying off to guitar heaven. His playing is classic, evoking but not mimicking John Cipollina, Jerry Garcia, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. But it raises a conundrum: is Wilson about the songs or the craft? The former are fabulous, melodic and memorable. The latter fluid and phenomenal. Judging by the in-song applause as solos subsided, much of the audience had decided it Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Allen Ginsberg was once approached by two young acolytes eager to discuss literature. The bearded eminence of the Beats was the soul of generosity, giving up no small allowance of time to share his vast knowledge and experience. How they must have basked in the glow as a great poet treated them as equals. At a certain point, having put in sufficient effort, Ginsberg deemed it a good moment to change the subject. “So,” he said, “either of you guys suck cock?”It’s the making of this adventurer which is considered in Kill Your Darlings, and he’s played by the ever questing Daniel Radcliffe. Read more ...
David Nice
Read Erich Kästner’s 1928 novel about young Emil Tischbein and the Berlin boys he enlists to catch a thief, and you’ll come away feeling warm if slightly incredulous at the strong moral compass of all the kids and most of the adults. Gerhard Lamprecht’s early (1931) “talkie”, with a screenplay by Billy Wilder, has darker undertones, much admired by the obsessive 19-year-old Benjamin Britten. Carl Miller’s adaptation for Bijan Sheibani’s racy new National Theatre production sees it from a slightly different angle, scrupulously mindful of Weimar Berlin, but last night I had the feeling that not Read more ...
Matt Wolf
These days, it seems you can't move without encountering musicals in some context or another on TV. Series like Smash and Glee trade on the genre to a degree hovering between the loving and the parasitic, while two contrasting documentaries, The Sound of Musicals and The Story of Musicals, have shed varying degrees of light on how shows get actually get to the stage (or not). Shifting from the art form to the artist, Lionel Bart: Reviewing the Situation casts an affectionate if not wholly sentimental eye on the man behind arguably the greatest of all British musicals, Oliver!, only to lay Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
When dealing with the big beasts of the classical repertoire, the Royal Ballet has a history of both playing it straight and playing it very, very well. Peter Wright’s venerable production of The Nutcracker is a case in point: although sticking close to the original scenario and choreography, Wright (along with designer Julia Trevelyan Oman) created in 1986 a show that feels ever-fresh in 2013. Full of visual delight, wonderful dancing, and festive cheer, this Nutcracker also feels genuine, as if the people behind it continue to feel the magic themselves.In his story treatment, Wright eschews Read more ...
Paul McGee
There's been a quiet but nevertheless palpable sense of anticipation surrounding psych-folk enigma Linda Perhacs' first-ever European tour. Comparatively low-key advance publicity certainly proved no impediment to a sold-out house for the recent opening date at Berlin's Kantine am Berghain, a somewhat drab and unprepossessing bunker in the shadow of the city's notorious techno temple.The late bloomer/Indian summer narrative has become ever more familiar to music fans in recent years. Vashti Bunyan and Terry Callier were both rescued from obscurity via a combination of serendipity and a devout Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There is a wonderful play to be written about the month in 1502 when Cesare Borgia was holed up in a castle in northern Italy with Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli. Which of these two was working for the fearsome Borgia? Wrong. It was the creator of the Mona Lisa, not the author of The Prince. Machiavelli was a young diplomat of the new Florentine republic without a thought of realpolitik in his idealistic young head. Meanwhile back in Tuscany another young republican was working on that symbol of civic liberty, the statue of David.It would be 10 years later that the Medicis grabbed Read more ...
kate.bassett
It has been a hard slog, but he's emerging victorious in the end. Essentially, Shakespeare's Henry V tracks a military campaign. In Act One, the eponymous king declares war on France. By Act Five, against the odds, he has won and is sealing an entente cordiale with a kiss – wooing the French princess, Katharine. At the start of Michael Grandage's eagerly awaited West End production, the Chorus (Ashley Zhangazha) darts to the apron stage to address the audience with: "Oh for a Muse of fire, that would ascend/The brightest heaven of invention!"He's a youth in jeans and a T-shirt printed Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Alexander Payne is at home with the road movie. From mid-life crisis in Californian wine country in Sideways to dealing with life after the death of a loved one in About Schmidt, he has a knack of tapping into the human spirit and an affinity with the American landscape. Taking great lengths to elicit the whirs and hums of vehicles and the many bumps along the open road, his exploration of the USA is always an eye-opening experience. Nebraska is no different and is the setting for a Midwestern adventure which captures the essence of an agricultural town, the antics of an elderly community and Read more ...
David Nice
There are probably more fine string quartets in the world than audiences to listen to them, or so a gloomy estimate from a major chamber music festival would have us believe. Fortunately the Wigmore Hall usually guarantees crowds to hear the best, and at the highest level too we’re spoilt for choice. After two outstandingly vibrant recent visitors, the Belcea and Jerusalem Quartets, the equally touted Pavel Haas Quartet merely seemed very good rather than great, though they upped the stakes when mercurial 22-year-old Daniil Trifonov joined them for Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet.At first, there Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The bleak opening of Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves is set in a nursing home where a man is dying of AIDS, tended by nurses who themselves know next to nothing of the disease. The phrase one nurse utters as a warning gives this Swedish drama its title: any human contact, even if it’s intended as the smallest act of kindness, risks passing on the infection. Simon Kaijser’s three-part drama will show us the varieties of response across society to these extreme new circumstances.It begins in the Swedish countryside, where Rasmus (Adam Pålsson) has grown up happily, surrounded by loving Read more ...
David Benedict
How do you solve a problem like...no, not Maria, Candide? Musicals are loved for their scores – and Leonard Bernstein’s one for this really is a cracker – but they’re held together by their books, i.e. the script/dramatic context that makes audiences care about the characters and plot. Filled to bursting with good intentions, Matthew White’s exuberantly rough’n’tumble new Menier production does its damnedest but there’s no disguising the fact that Lillian Hellman’s adaptation of Voltaire’s satire of inexhaustible optimism remains tension-free. The gulf between the score’s strength and Read more ...