Reviews
Marina Vaizey
Carving in Britain from 1910 to Now is an accurate but unalluring title for what is a seminal show. The Fine Art Society is one of the oldest commercial galleries in Britain, founded in 1876 and still in its original building. Due to this longevity the FAS has unusual access to private collections, and an ability to mix the historic and contemporary to fine effect. The result here showcases an original anthology, simultaneously scholarly and commercial, a mix of loans and for-sale.The collection is a striking complement to the Royal Academy’s dazzling exploration of millennia of Read more ...
theartsdesk
Herbert: Bodily Functions (Special Edition)Thomas H GreenMatthew Herbert is an electronic polymath whose career is fascinating whether you’re a fan of his music or not. Currently he’s working hard resurrecting the BBC’s iconic music and sound effects unit, the Radiophonic Workshop, and he’s recently released an album (as Wishmountain) sampling the top ten best-selling items in Tesco’s, while also having time for the odd Björk collaboration and the occasional tour wherein pig parts are cooked on stage in an anti-consumerist sonic performance art extravaganza. In short, Herbert has grown into Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It depends what you expect. This is Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty. So what do you expect of (a) Matthew Bourne and (b) The Sleeping Beauty? On both counts I’d answer: much more than we get here. Bourne at his best is brilliant - his Swan Lake, his Play Without Words, are two of the most rewarding and entertaining (I mean moving the heart, as well as hugely gratifying the visual palate) shows in dance in the past generation. His Nutcracker! is young, sexy and amusing. His Cinderella came back, revised, two years ago with a poignancy that evidently touched deep into his love for his parents Read more ...
Russ Coffey
From being disowned by his family to writing the ultimate hangover lament, Kris Kristofferson has, partly, led the life of a country song. The other part, however, has included a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, an illustrious movie career and dating Barbara Streisand. In 1971 he famously sang about being “partly truth and partly fiction - a walking contradiction”. Now, at 76, the Texan’s clever lines enjoy a lower profile. Still, this year’s Feeling Mortal has won widespread praise.Last night, Kristofferson largely avoided musing on life’s final chapter. Instead he leant his gravitas to a Read more ...
graeme.thomson
What is truth? Is it fixed or fluid, personal or universal? Does it require hard evidence or merely faith? These are the areas of interest poked and prodded in this co-production between the Traverse and Peepolykus, the company which previously brought The Hound of the Baskervilles to the stage. The result is an eccentric romp through the life of Arthur Conan Doyle, a famously ridiculed figurehead for the spirit world in his later years, which ponders – none too deeply, but with immense good humour – the conflict between fideism and rationalism.Doyle’s story is presented here as an Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
What if Handel, after his death, descended to an eminently civilised afterlife, where he spent his time making music and new friends with the likes of Beethoven and even Jimi Hendrix? That’s the premise of Louis de Bernières’ new play Mr Handel, a show that brings the author himself together with baroque chamber group The Brook Street Band and soprano Nicki Kennedy in a gentle meander through the life and works of baroque’s finest.It’s Christmas, and novelty shows are all around, if you can find them among the ubiquitous pantomimes and West End shows screaming ever louder for the attention of Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
My phone's predictive text posed an interesting question. Robert le Doable it insisted on calling last night's opera. And it's often been asked of this and other grands opéras. Are they doable? Such was the munificence of the times in which they thrived, and such has been the collapse in their popularity, are grands opéras worthy of resurrection? And do we have the resources and good will to do justice to their singular vision? If any opera company could meet the all-singing, all-dancing demands, it is the Royal Opera House. And if any of the hundreds of grands opéras that graced Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
Support bands tend to get short shrift, but it would be criminal not to give Evil Blizzard their due here. Made up of three bass guitarists with assorted effects pedals and a drummer who also sang, three members of the band were in pink pyjamas and wearing masks, while the fourth was in black leather and a Hawkwind hairdo. They produced industrial levels of noise around steady riffs and a variety of filthy bass sounds.One member removed his silver, robotic mask to reveal a scarecrow hood underneath, and a song later removed that too, only to be left with a third, featureless rubber face Read more ...
Heather Neill
Woking and Mars both provide subject matter for cartographers. John, who reckons he’s an achiever, is updating the local A to Z, while Behrooz, once a colleague of John’s, is exhibiting his paintings of the red planet. There’s a neat overlap in their occupations: the Martian invasion in H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds took place on Horsell Common, Woking.Tom Morton-Smith, one of the winners of the Papatango New Writing Competition, is not afraid of metaphor. In an age when religion and family structure no longer provide a moral life-map, it may be difficult to tell the difference between Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Usually when a band playing a venue the size of the Brighton Centre asks if the crowd would like to hear a new song the response is somewhat muted. However, this is a crowd of eager fans, average age around 17, and they yell back affirmatively with all their might. Rizzle Kicks are in their home city and it shows (especially when they later lead a chant for Brighton and Hove Albion FC – “Seagulls! Seagulls”). The song in question, “That’s Classic”, turns out to be a corker, built round a steel drum motif from Latin standard “Aquarela do Brasil” - the one repeatedly played in Terry Gilliam’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The romcom is an oddball. Though an ever-present at the multiplex, of all the genres it remains notoriously reluctant to take wing. The path of true love ne’er did run without all the usual box-ticking plot swerves. Full credit then to Celeste and Jesse Forever, for coming at the problem from a sideways angle. In this reimagining, boy and girl have lost each other before the start of the movie – they’re divorcing – but are still best of friends. In fact, creepily so.Celeste (Rashida Jones) is a thriving PR executive and finger-on-the-pulse author of the self-explanatory Shitegeist. She can Read more ...
Helen K Parker
Thomas was alone. And then, he wasn’t. As story-time opening lines go, this one is on a par with "once upon a time" in its simplicity. Simplicity, however, can be misleading. Our eponymous hero Thomas may in fact look like a simple red rectangle with the ability to move and jump, but thanks to a mysterious "event" within the computer programme he is part of, he has also been imbued with sentience. And he is not alone.Described by creator Mike Bithell as a minimalist game about friendship and jumping and floating and bouncing and anti-gravity, the aim of this avant-garde game is to manoeuvre Read more ...