Reviews
robert.sandall
You’ve got to take the pedal off the metal at some point, and in 2009 the prodigiously energetic New Yorker Joan Wasser – otherwise known as Joan As Police Woman - has apparently decided to ease up and release an album of cover versions.Any suspicions, however, that this might result in a night of cute karaoke knockabout were dispelled as soon as she took to the stage for an ecstatically received, sold-out show at London’s Union Chapel last night. Having spent the past 15 years working alongside pop auteurs of the calibre of Antony (of the Johnsons), Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley, her Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’ll always be Austen on the telly. As the Bard is to the boards, so is Saint Jane to the box. The six novels were published (though not all written) in a seven-year period in the 1810s. In a rather shorter tranche of the 1990s they were all adapted for the (mostly small) screen. They’ve now just been done again, on the whole rather less well than the first time round.And such is the public’s greed for stories from Austen’s world of box-hedged romantic decorum that these days even the authoress gets pressganged into starring as herself. Her early life was covered in Becoming Jane, her Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Buoyed by winning the Classic FM Innovation award at Friday's Classic FM Gramophone Awards for its cut-price ticket offer for Sun readers, the Royal Opera House was at it again last night with the return of Francesca Zambello's production of Carmen. There was even a short speech from Deborah Bull, welcoming the Sun contingent to the house while, of course, reminding everyone to turn off their mobile phones. For anybody making a first trip to Covent Garden, this would have been a cracking choice. Not only was there Roberto Alagna making his house debut as Don Jose, but also the Read more ...
anne.billson
Just when you thought vampires had lost their bite, along comes Korean director Park Chan-wook with Thirst. It's a loose adaptation of Emile Zola's Thérèse Raquin in which the adulterous lovers also happen to be drinkers of blood. They suck, they fuck and they kill, and, in the event of a vampire death-match, they would surely make mincemeat out of a toothless teen idol like Edward Cullen. Twilight this is not.The leading man is Song Kang-ho, one of the better-known Korean actors in the West thanks to his enjoyably broad performances in The Host and The Good, The Bad, The Weird (in which, Read more ...
mark.hudson
That artists didn't just respond to the rapacious commercialism of the late 20th century, but actively contributed to it is hardly news. That the marketing of art can be part of the art itself is something everyone now implicitly understands, even if it’s only through hearing Tracey Emin wittering about herself on television.Yet if the fact that Tate Modern has chosen to base its major autumn exhibition around such chronically over-exposed figures as Emin, Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons seems at first almost incredible, such Read more ...
joe.muggs
For some people, dubstep has an identity problem. Its suburban origins and recent global spread, its propensity for hybridity, the relatively genial nature of the scene, and perhaps worst of all its popularity with – whisper it – students lead some commentators to regard it with suspicion. A common attack is to compare it unfavourably with either its antecedent jungle (the wild polyrhythmic early-mid 1990s precursor to drum & bass), or its first cousin grime (the fearsomely jagged, lyrically ultra-violent sound of London's pirate radio stations in the first part of this decade): next to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“Got a mortgage.” Thus spake Michael McIntyre last night. It’s an article of faith for McIntyre - an all but unique selling point - that he is one of us. He wears a suit to work and doesn’t think about al-Qaeda that much. How many other comedians do you come across who remind you even vaguely of you? Where most stand-ups are weird or ugly or angry or hairy or epically rude (or all of the above), McIntyre is groundbreakingly normal, boy-next-door bourgeois. The jokes are all about the things all of us do - in the shops, in the kitchen, the bedroom. But not in the office. In what other Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Theatre is the art of storytelling, and the best stories are those that constantly change their shape. In Dennis Kelly's storming new play, Orphans, which wowed critics and audiences when it opened in Edinburgh in August, the narrative morphs and flips like a bad conscience. And for good reason. Long before the final climax, you just know that something isn't right.The evening starts innocuously enough. Danny and Helen are a nice couple. If not exactly shining, happy people, they at least exude an air of comfort as they settle down to enjoy a quiet night at home. Nice room, nice furnishings, Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
You’re playing, say, a Brahms sonata. You’ve got jam on your face. Your trousers fall down. Your accompanist starts to play the piano with his head. What you’re meant to do in this situation, I remember my violin teacher drilling into me, is to drive on blindly. Judging last night’s concert by this basic lesson on musicianship, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra, who drove on through a complete blackout during the penultimate tableau of The Firebird, triumphed.
Ok, so the darkness lasted only two seconds. And it’s lucky it hit when it did. A few bars later - in the shifting Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Rubies is a ballet for a girl comfortable with her curves, who can slink her hips and tip her bottom and relish seeing the men’s eyes widen. That the said girl is a ballerina, for whom curves are usually anathema, shows the personality challenge that this snazzy, jazzy George Balanchine ballet sets to its leading lady.That Sophie Martin, Scottish Ballet’s French leading lady, had enough personality to suggest Bette Midler curves, despite her refined build, is a measure of what fun she was to watch when the company hit Sadler’s Wells last night.Musical values were good, with Stravinsky, Berio Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Staycationers who didn't make it to their favourite Greek isle this summer may constitute a ready-made audience for Driving Aphrodite, the travelogue masquerading as a film that has opened just in time to tap into a collective desire for sun, sand, and the odd drop of retsina just as the nights are beginning to draw in.Others will merely roll their eyes at the predictability of it all, from the boorish stereotypes of Mike Reiss's script to the feel-good ending that lands our lovesick heroine, My Big Fat Greek Wedding's Nia Vardalos, in a big fat Greek clinch. (Oops, I gave it away, but c'mon Read more ...