Reviews
aleks.sierz
Most of us would love to live in a happy family, but it’s the unhappy ones that make the most compelling drama. And few playwrights do familial tensions as instinctively as Polly Stenham, whose highly successful 2007 debut That Face and 2009 follow-up Tusk Tusk both explored the tensions between parents and children. In her new play, she revisits the mother-son relationship, and adds some thrilling twists to the bubbling brew.In the Royal Court’s dark and claustrophobic Theatre Upstairs the set makes an immediate statement. We are in the living room of a ramshackle manor house which is Read more ...
Laura Silverman
For all its ruminative merits, Richard Vergette's drama is not the “searing political thriller” it purports to be. It raises lots of interesting questions, but they get in the way of any deep emotive power.At the work's core is a relationship between a prisoner and the politician whose daughter he killed. The politician saves the prisoner from death row on the condition that he can educate him. The scenario has lashings of searing potential, but the play's overarching tone is distinctly pedagogical. There are messages about the value of education in reforming criminals; messages about Read more ...
Nick Hasted
V/H/S is the first film to convincingly update EC comics’ Fifties horror anthologies, which gleefully corrupted the kids of Eisenhower’s America. They also inspired British films such as Tales from the Crypt (the 1972 anthology with Peter Cushing as a vengeful pet owner, and Joan Collins murdered by a psychotic Father Christmas), an HBO TV series and the Stephen King-George Romero tribute Creepshow. Ealing's Dead of Night (1945) and its murderous ventriloquist’s dummy looms over them all. V/H/S keeps these forebears' twists and narrative variety, slams them into the found-footage sub-genre Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Read theartsdesk's review of the final episode of UtopiaNew from Kudos, makers of the likes of Spooks and Hunted, comes this sinister six-parter. Steeped in surveillance paranoia, conspiracy theory and online anomie, it concerns a mysterious graphic novel called The Utopia Experiment, created by a brilliant but schizophrenic scientist who killed himself after writing it. Supposedly there was a part two, which was destroyed... or maybe it wasn't.If you weren't seized with dread in the opening moments of this first episode, you must have been overdoing the cognac and sleeping tablets. After a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Few productions give the sound designer absolute pride of place, but such is the presumably inevitable nature of a play called The Silence of the Sea that what isn't voiced counts every bit as much as what is. Gregory Clarke's aural landscape works overtime in a 95-minute piece (no interval) that couples speech with sustained silences, yes, but also with eerie ambient noises that suggest all manner of offstage activity complementing the brooding stillness on view. Engaging? Up to a point, and the acting is impeccable throughout, but even the most expert sound cues can't forestall a gathering Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
About the only thing I dislike about My Mad Fat Diary is the title. Based on a similarly-titled teenage memoir by the writer Rae Earl, the first episode of this six-part comedy drama is touching, hilarious and perfectly cast. And the lead character, who introduces herself as a “16-stone 16-year-old”, has just been discharged from a psychiatric hospital after four months of in-patient treatment, so it’s certainly apt.Besides, Rae would never be the type to tiptoe around two of what she sees as her defining features with delicate language. Young Glaswegian actress Sharon Rooney plays the book’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Recipe for Follett Without Finish, a popular broth. Ingredients as follows. One History of Medieval England. One crown, preferably tarnished. Axes, in abundance. Similar quantities of sword. Drawerful of knives. Much rope. A couple of dozen pieces of timber (human). Some French accents. One patch of Hungary. Goodly supply of Saturday night primetime.First, dress Hungarian patch to look like muddy, woody shire. Plant timber (human). Next, rip up History of Medieval England and replace with codswallop supplied by Follett. Wrongfoot audience by showing funeral of Edward II but tastefully Read more ...
David Nice
It was the kind of programme that great pianist Vladimir Horowitz used to pioneer, with the simple balm of Scarlatti offset by Scriabin’s flights of fancy, and a dash of virtuoso fireworks to conclude. Though he is an admirer of the master, and even featured Horowitz’s hyperintensification of an already extravagant Liszt transcription in this recital, Yevgeny Sudbin is very much his own man: a thinker verging on the visionary who always seems to know exactly where the more extreme fantasists among his chosen composers are heading.What a good idea to make a centred start with pensive Scarlatti Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Slavik Kryklyvyy was Jennifer Lopez's tush-shaking partner in Shall We Dance?, getting one over on Richard Gere. But that was 2004, and what happened then? Ballroom Dancer is a documentary feature about his year on the edge, 2010, when the former world number one Latin dancer tried to come back from a series of injuries and broken partnerships to mount his throne once more. This is Strictly Ballroom meets Black Swan, a film about a driven, spectacularly talented man for whom Latin dancing is a scarily obsessive vocation, a man who would give up almost anything, including his humanity, to be Read more ...
Helen K Parker
It’s been a rough couple of years for Capcom and their fandom. After the slating they received for rebooting their Resident Evil franchise, the storm has continued with their attempts to do the same with their much-loved Devil May Cry series. The fanboys were up in arms as usual, mostly concerning main character Dante’s hair, but Capcom were always prepared for a backlash, and Kudos to them for sticking to their guns, because they’ve rebooted DMC with a vengeance.Taking the story right back to its origins, the mantle has now been handed down to British developers Ninja Theory (of Enslaved: Read more ...
peter.quinn
On this debut album for Blue Note, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter José James effortlessly blends the beat-driven mien of hip-hop, the surprising transitions of jazz and the raw emotion of classic R&B to produce his strongest statement to date. Following three critically acclaimed albums for the Brownswood and Verve labels, James seems to have discovered the key to making the simple resonate.With its oh-so-smooth foundation of bass, Fender Rhodes and tight horn stabs, the single “Trouble” sees him channelling the spirits of Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. The singer is blessed with the very Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marianne Faithfull: Broken EnglishIn 1979, there was no obvious place for Marianne Faithfull. Identified with the Sixties and the baggage which came from her relationship with Mick Jagger, she had spent part of the decade living on a wall in Soho, a drug addict with few prospects, a period harrowingly detailed in her autobiography. There was an album in 1976, the humdrum, country flavoured Dreamin’ my Dreams, but punk, surprisingly, offered a life line. She appeared on stage with pop-punkers The Boys and, in 1979, issued the extraordinary Broken English, which sounded of its time yet Read more ...