Reviews
Gary Naylor
If you’ll forgive me the first of two tiptoes into Gonzo Journalism, a few weeks ago I found out that I have a faulty gene - not a romantically tragic Romanov one, but a defect on the double helix that had already manifested itself in a condition affecting my family and that I may have passed to my sons.That crucial medical knowledge leads to early diagnosis and allows for preventative treatment if required, but what if I had known about it 30 years ago, just before my DNA was shuffled at conception's roulette wheel? What if its impact were greater, life-altering, even life-threatening for Read more ...
Heather Neill
Gorky's satire is set in the summer of 1904, between the opening of The Cherry Orchard and Chekhov's death that year, and the first Russian Revolution early in 1905. Summerfolk has echoes of Chekhov, The Seagull as well as The Cherry Orchard, to which it could be a sequel. Gorky's folk, lazily holidaying in their summer dachas, might be inhabiting the new development which Lopakhin was to build in place of the cherry trees chopped down at the end of Chekhov's last play. The closeness of the relationship is explicit here: there is a reference to trees having been cut down to make space for the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Mother Pearl is not direct. While sixth track “Checking In,” with its rising-falling cadences and verse-chorus structure, is its most immediate, the dominant impression of the new LP by the Iceland-born Gyða Valtysdóttir is that it’s about creating an atmosphere and then nurturing it to generate an enveloping aural milieu.According to Gyða, quoted in the promotional material, “Mother Pearl is a seed, is potential, is a gift, is an aragonite, is a jewel created from an irritation from a grain of sand, is iridescent, contains all the colours, is vibrant, it is a fertile egg waiting to become.” Read more ...
Robert Beale
The members of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, on an intensive tour of the UK and Ireland which sees them right now performing daily after long journeys, are heroes by any standard.They are also musicians of high calibre and with a distinguished tradition. The programme they offered in Manchester was designed to link Britain and Ukraine symbolically, but it was – as with all its variants on the tour – built around Beethoven.For a symphony orchestra, their numbers on tour are modest, with 34 string players and 15 others, but it’s a contingent that works very well for Beethoven – Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want. Er… another nostalgic play about growing up in a Yorkshire post-industrial city?Hard on the heels of John Godber’s Leeds-set Do I Love You? running last week at Wilton’s and Kat Rose Martin’s marvellous Bradford-set £1 Thursdays at the Finborough (my best new play of 2023), we take a 30-mile trip south to Doncaster (Donny to friends) for Children of the Night. Is it something in the air? Besides the coal dust of course.
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If those earlier productions traded primarily on the Read more ...
Simon Thompson
It’s hard enough to sell tickets for any concert of classical music these days, let alone one that features mostly contemporary music; yet in this week’s offering from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, featuring six recently written works, none of which could be described as familiar, there was hardly a seat to be had in Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall. Why?If there was any justice then it would at least in part be down to the quality of the orchestral playing, which is normally a given from this crew. And, indeed, the orchestra sounded terrific in Anna Clyne’s Sound and Fury, a piece written for them Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Another day, another few million bucks for Taylor Sheridan. Hot on the heels of Marshals, his latest Yellowstone spin-off, his inexorable march through the TV schedules continues with this saga of the Clyburn family. Previously they called New York home, but thanks to a sudden catastrophe they find themselves moving to the huge spaces and epic scenery of Montana's Madison River Valley. You could call it melodrama, and at times it threatens to go the whole hog and turn into soap, but The Madison does have the gift of watchability. It also delivers a hefty jolt of star power, in the shape Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The London Handel Festival delivered extra rations at Smith Square Hall on Saturday. A bright, crisp beginning-of-spring afternoon made a fitting backdrop – with sunlight streaming in through the (former) church windows – for Handel’s witty but tender pastoral entertainment, or mini-opera, of 1718, Acis and Galatea.Then, as the shadows lengthened, we returned for the unabashed grandeur and virtuosity of the Ode for St Cecilia’s Day of 1739. The singers and players of Gabrieli (no longer “Consort”) under Paul McCreesh (pictured below by Ben Wright) brought an equal but differently-weighted Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Juanita Stein had a simple request for her bandmates. “Don’t fuck this up”, she joked, before the Australian group played a song from their new album for only the second time ever. You could understand the concern, however lightly it was expressed. These are still early days in the band’s reformation, with this year’s “Strange Days” offering the first material in 11 years.Hence the trio, augmented to a foursome here, were back in what Stein called a home away from home – the cramped surroundings of King Tut’s. It is a familiar haunt for the group, while also indicative of the fact that Read more ...
Robert Beale
Coinciding with Mothers' Day, and a week after International Women’s Day, Manchester Camerata gave this fascinating window into the world of lesser-known music by British women composers.Why such an education is needed is a good question. Are some of these pieces (which are to be recorded for CD by John Andrews, soloists Alexandra Dariescu, Alex Mitchell and Rachael Clegg and the Camerata strings this week) in the nature of what a former, male and very Lancastrian, member of the Hallé brass section once defined for me as “justly neglected masterpieces”?Or should we go looking for hidden gems Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s disquieting, as a bloke, to hear 2000 female voices singing about the sexual frustration caused by premature ejaculation. A noisy chorale, heartfelt, behind Lily Allen’s 2009 hit “Not Fair”, cascades from two tiers of balconies. “And then you make this noise, and it's apparent it's all over.” Lily Allen isn’t even on yet. Just this celebratory femme-centric congregation around the joys of dating a one-minute man.It’s the first half of the show – and make no mistake, this is a show, touring theatres, not a gig – and it’s a simple set-up. Three female cello players, clad in black, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the bulk of the 20 tracks collected on Eternal Journey - The Arrangements and Productions of Charles Stepney were originally issued between 1967 and 1971, the period evoked by this compilation dedicated to the titular musical polymath is not limited to the late Sixties and the early Seventies. There is an early Nineties character too.That was when a lot of what’s heard on the compilation reached a fresh listening audience. Twenty or-so years after they were first released, Terry Callier’s “What Color is Love,” Minnie Riperton’s “Les Fleur” and Marlena Shaw’s “California Soul” Read more ...