Reviews
David Nice
“Aren’t you sick of Britten yet?” asked a colleague three-quarters of the way through the composer’s centenary year. Absolutely not; there have been revelations and there still remains so much to discover or re-discover. Yet re-evaluation can sour as well as sweeten; acclaimed works in the canon may turn out less good than remembered. Was it my own temporary blind spot, the problem of the piece or the musical and dramatic shortcomings so apparent in Fiona Shaw’s Glyndebourne Tour production of The Rape of Lucretia that I emerged into the crepuscular garden unmoved and a little repelled? Read more ...
graham.rickson
I’d not previously identified much comedic potential in Mahler’s gargantuan Sixth Symphony, a piece which would feature prominently in many people’s lists of most depressing works. Which presumably explains why this astonishing concert wasn’t a sell-out, and why the prevailing gloom prompted a fair few audience members to make an intrusive dash for the exit before the double basses sounded their final pizzicato.Still, despite the darkness, there were giggles to be had. Mahler’s hammer blows of fate are difficult to realise. Here, a poker-faced percussionist precariously wielded a giant mallet Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Madness: Take it or Leave itIn 1981, Madness followed The Beatles, Slade and The Sex Pistols by playing versions of themselves in a film. Take it or Leave it is no masterpiece, but it is hugely entertaining. At the time, surprisingly, a soundtrack album wasn’t issued and its belated appearance on CD plugs a gap in the story of Madness.This smart, two-disc set teams a DVD of the film with the shelved album, for which a master tape was assembled. The CD is not a live set though, collecting the rough-and-ready performances seen in the film, but assembles familiar studio recordings and Fats Read more ...
James Williams
"We got 42 years of music to lay on you" is an audacious opening statement for any live band, but when the speaker is Phillip Bailey, lead singer in the current reincarnation of the legendary Earth, Wind & Fire, it is a statement of intent. Playing at the palatial Albert Hall in support of their new album Now, Then & Forever, the current line-up of young session players, complementing the core trio of Bailey, bassist Verdine White and drummer Ralph Johnson, proved without a shadow of a doubt that they still have the energy and skill to hold a crowd enraptured.This is one of the first Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
At the beginning of the 17th century an anonymous Anglo-Netherlandish artist produced an elaborate procession portrait of the septuagenarian Virgin Queen, tactfully portrayed as though several decades younger, when she had succeeded to the throne in her mid-twenties. Elizabeth I is held aloft under an embroidered canopy and surrounded by Knights of the Garter, courtiers, members of the royal household, and aristocrats. Some of her 50-strong personal bodyguards, the Gentleman Pensioners, also appear; the ladies of the court follow, and privileged citizens observe the retinue from the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Man Down opens with a tried and tested sitcom premise; middle-aged-and-going-nowhere-fast Dan is being dumped by his much more mature, high-achieving girlfriend, Naomi. She's tired of his juvenile daydreaming - could a hovercraft be powered by farts? - and the fact that he lives in a flat attached to his parents' house. And he still hasn't replaced a lightbulb that blew weeks ago.But what follows deviates from that seemingly unpromising beginning to give us a half-hour of wonderfully silly, often slapstick comedy fused with a subtle decoding of male-female, adult-child relationships. If that Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms Beloved: Symphonies 2 & 4, Clara Schumann Lieder Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi/John Axelrod, with Indra Thomas, Nicole Cabelle (sopranos) (Telarc)There’s a glut of Brahms symphonies on disc this autumn, with live recordings from Valery Gergiev and a new Leipzig cycle on Decca from Riccardo Chailly. As an appetizer, you could do far worse than to investigate this handsomely recorded, well performed Telarc set. Conductor John Axelrod believes that each of Brahms’s four symphonies has a distinct character, all directly inspired by his unrequited love for Clara Read more ...
Veronica Lee
We're advised to take off our shoes, as the show will knock our socks off; it's the first of many neatly worked bits of wordplay about how good the show will be - “Is there anybody named Annette in the audience? Good, because this is comedy without Annette” - in a fantastic opening riff before Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez get down to the proper business of the evening. Entitled Just the Two of Each of Us, this is another of their trademark shows of madcap physical storytelling, in which they each play several characters, with the only props on stage being two chairs.The chairs became any Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
One of this year’s Oscar contenders, Lincoln, covered the ending of the American Civil War as it played out in the comfortable confines of the Capitol. 12 Years a Slave, an exceptional film that will surely be in the running next year, reveals the “fearful ill” that set the country alight in the first place.It’s based on a true story that is shocking even for antebellum America, of a free man from upstate New York, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Compared to Steve McQueen’s previous films, Hunger and Shame, the narrative style is conventional Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Jim Jarmusch's characters have always been ineffably cool, whether the slackers of Stranger than Paradise, the accountant lost in the Wild West of Dead Man, or the hit man with samurai pretensions of Ghost Dog. It goes without saying that if he makes a film about vampires, they’ll be dripping with style.From the opening sequence of Only Lovers Left Alive – a spinning camera peering down upon the lounging, elegantly clad, pre-Raphaelite figures of Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston – this gently satiric vampire film has us in a seductive grasp. Adam and Eve are a married couple who, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Without doubt, 2013 has been the year of Rudimental on Planet Pop: a second number one single with “Waiting All Night”; a number one debut album with Home, hugely successful festival appearances, and plenty of TV coverage. It’s no wonder that the youth of the West Midlands (and some of their mums and dads, by the look of things) turned up to see the band in their droves at this O2 Academy show that’s been sold out for weeks. “Eagerly anticipated” doesn’t cover it.Things kicked off early with plenty of warm-up action from Joel Compass and then Shakka’s laid-back grooves and finally DJ Gorgon Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The front rows of an Abandonman gig are not a place for shy people. The core of rapping Irish comedian Rob Broderick’s act has long been to interact with the audience and turn the nuggets he gleans into ridiculous songs. For his latest show, Moonrock Boombox, which he now brings to the Brighton Comedy Festival, he turns the crowd participation into a surreal space adventure. It’s fortunate, then, since we’re sitting in row three, that my girlfriend is not especially shy for she became a key player in Abandonman’s mission across the cosmos.Broderick is accompanied by guitarist James Hancock Read more ...