Reviews
Hugh Barnes
A Kind of Kidnapping is a low-budget British comedy with a neat premise and satirical view of class and politics in the midst of a cost of living crisis.A young couple struggling to make ends meet and facing eviction from their squalid flat come up with a plan to strike pay dirt by kidnapping a sleazy Tory politician. The only snag is the MP’s wife is so thoroughly sick of his lying and cheating that she declines to pay the ransom, leaving the bungling crooks with a problem – and a hostage – on their hands.The best thing about this film written and directed by DG Clark (How Not to Live Your Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Even before the Just Stop Oil protesters hit the stage after the interval, this was destined to be one of the most politically charged Proms the Royal Albert Hall has witnessed for a while. The rousing cheer that greeted the BBC Singers was hopefully all the beleaguered BBC bosses needed to realise – after the ill-advised attempt to abolish them in March – what a key part of our music culture they remain today.On top of this there was the programme, featuring two nationalist Nordic composers – one especially famed for his anti-Russian stance – and a contemporary Ukrainian, presided over by a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This five-part policier is the finale of the current Walter Presents French season, and takes us to the town of Montclair on France’s eastern border. The opening self-contained episode, occupying a chunky two-hour slot, took for its theme the legend of the Pied Piper. In this, you may recall, the children of Hamelin were lured away by the titular itinerant musician and drowned.As its title suggests (the original French is Disparition Inquiétante), missing persons are the show’s stock-in-trade. In this case, a group of nine young schoolchildren vanished without trace from the centre of Read more ...
Robert Beale
Bellini’s La Sonnambula is the highspot of a four-show lyric theatre bill at the Buxton International Festival this year, and demonstrates again how beautifully suited the small Matcham opera house in the High Peak is to mid-19th century bel canto repertoire.Given that the acoustics are so good, and what really matters is to get a good team of voices and a conductor of real musicianship in the pit – both of which they have here – it might have been tempting to skimp on the production values. Times are still tough when it comes to festival-style opera, and there are signs that in some aspects Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Historically, the Royal Court is the venue for cutting-edge new writing – you know, the kind of plays that have something urgent to say about contemporary life. Like what? Well, let’s see, something important to say about digital alienation, climate catastrophe, teenage discontent and family breakdown.And, indeed, these are some of the themes of Michael Wynne’s new Scouse comedy Cuckoo, directed by this venue’s outgoing head Vicky Featherstone, in a co-production with the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, where it can be seen later in the summer. But the play has two problems: it isn’t funny Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
“There are sex maniacs out there, sodomites, murderers, suicidal people, and communists on the loose! I vote for a curfew!” This fabulous explosion of anxiety, from a teenage girl who we’ve seen beat other young women to a pulp for no good reason, both begs to be quoted, and is indicative of the deep well of ignorant loathing and hypocrisy that informs this very funny, but also deeply serious satirical horror from the gifted Brazilian writer-director Anita Rocha da Silveira. While da Silveira happily wears her influences on her sleeve – Stanley Kubrick, Dario Argento, John Carpenter Read more ...
Anya Ryan
“One night I had a vision of this,” says a visibly emotional Damon Albarn as he looks out to the mass of the crowd at Wembley. Despite closing the London Olympics in 2012, selling millions of albums and headlining Glastonbury, there is the sense that even in their prime, performing two nights at the 90,000 Stadium was one step out of reach.So, the unadulterated elation – shock even that Blur feels to be here now pumps this reunion. All these years later they’ve done it, and you bet that they’re going to enjoy it.But it is the band’s quiet, unpretentious delight that makes this show so heart- Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
As an actor, Mark Rylance specialises in outsiders and eccentrics, outliers of one kind or another. He identified and developed his latest character himself, based on the real-life, mid-19th century Hungarian doctor whose pioneering, lifesaving discoveries were long ignored by the medical Establishment – who in his lifetime was a tragic pariah rather than the hero he should have been. A perfect fit, perhaps. And yet the challenge of dramatising Semmelweis’s story is a tricky one, given a central character who was his own worse enemy and appears to have lacked anything like Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (FIJM), the largest in the world, is genuinely on a roll. The head of programming of the huge event, which takes place all around the Quartier des Spectacles in the centre of the city, says in this year's wrap-up press release that “a new wind is blowing through our beloved jazz world, and we can be proud today to see the public rallying around. A booming new scene with legends leading the way: Vive le jazz!”This thought, as he told me in an interview, is more than just a hunch. Statistics issued for last year’s 42nd edition showed that 52% of Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It’s impossible to think about Jean Cooke’s work without taking into account her relationship with her husband, the painter John Bratby, because his controlling personality profoundly affected every aspect of her life.Had it not been for him, she might never have become a painter at all. She studied sculpture and pottery and, when they met in 1953, was running her own pottery in Sussex. They married the same year, but Bratby didn’t want a potter for a wife, so Cooke went to the Royal College of Art to study painting.Bratby’s attitude was still ambivalent, though. He would only allow her Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The farewell for KISS has lasted so long that this Glasgow show, their final ever UK gig, came four years after the End of the Road tour first stopped off in the city. Admittedly that is partly down to the coronavirus scuppering touring plans for a couple of years, but even without that there is a suspicion a group who have monetised themselves so effectively over the years might have found a reason for another trip back here.After all, this tour also featured the chance for afternoon VIP meet and greets for a few thousand quid, while a “golden circle” was in operation down the front, a sight Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
First things first. The support acts at events like this usually get completely overlooked, but it would be frankly criminal not to give a mention to a superb set by the Chicks. They dropped the “Dixie” from their original name because of its now “problematic” political connotations, and their critical comments about Dubya Bush provoked a career-changing backlash, but they’ve bounced back feistier than ever.Armed with an arsenal of instruments sure to bring joy to country music fans – dobro, pedal steel, fiddle, banjo, mandolin – they surged through a set of old favourites, including “Cowboy Read more ...