Reviews
Sebastian Scotney
The Duke, directed by the late Roger Michell (1956-2021), is a delight. At its heart is a towering, defining performance from Jim Broadbent and an unforgettably surprising role for Helen Mirren.Broadbent plays a real-life character, the Newcastle taxi driver Kempton Bunton (1904-1976), who stole Francisco Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" from the National Gallery in 1961. He returned the picture much later and also confessed to the theft.There is a wonderfully ironic plot-line running through the film. The police pompously, plummily speculate about who might be Read more ...
Ian Julier
Although the large auditorium of Lighthouse, Poole may not offer the most favourable scale and intimacy for a chamber recital, the high quality of communicative chemistry and performance readily reached out to engage and hold the audience spellbound for the whole evening. For those still unaware, Felix Klieser has been making much news in recent times. Appointed last year as the BSO’s new Artist-in-Residence, he has already impressed in a performance of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No.4 with the orchestra conducted by Kirill Karabits. As well as concerto performances and chamber recitals, his two- Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
At first glance, it was the most unlikely of friendships, even for the solipsistic milieu of the New York art scene. Andy Warhol: crown prince of Pop art, uber-celebrity, one of the most iconic figures in the world; and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the rebellious, dreadlocked, graffiti artist turned neo-expressionist wunderkind. One white, middle aged, his star fading, the other black, in his twenties and on the rise. And yet, for a few years in the Eighties, they were friends, inseparable ones, as well as highly productive collaborators. Their relationship has been frequently Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Edmond Rostand’s familiar story of ventriloquised love becomes a sensual, sacrificial tragedy, in Joe Wright’s heady cinematic Valentine, adapted by screenwriter Erica Schmidt from her own stage musical, with music by members of The National.The setting is somewhere between the 17th and 18th century, earthy history and fairy tale. We begin in the boudoir of Roxanne (Haley Bennett), as her maid explains the female facts of life: “Children need love, adults need money.” Cash comes from the sinister Duc de Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), who sweeps her off to the theatre; en route, Wright builds a Read more ...
David Nice
The headline was never going to be snappy, but “Klaus Mäkelä conducts…” as a start would have pulled it all together. A trip to Oslo last week was not wasted: he did indeed take charge of one of his two main orchestras, in a typically offbeat programme, a total sensation (*****).But when he called in sick from his hotel room yesterday morning, the London Philharmonic Orchestra sequel ((****), featuring two of the same composers, had to go ahead without him and also without Kaija Saariaho’s Asteroid 4179:Toutatis, programmed by Mäkelä to lead us straight into Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“You could read at home,” says Bettina (Anoushka Chadha), Year 10, her school uniform perfectly pressed, hair neatly styled. “You could be an annoying little shit at home,” retorts her sister Asha (Safiyya Ingar), Year 13, all fire and fury in Doc Martens and rainbow headphones. Two Billion Beats, Sonali Bhattacharyya’s new play for the Orange Tree, draws us in with snappy lines and raucous energy before delivering an emotional wallop.Asha is waiting to go home until their mum has left for work so she doesn’t have to talk about her history essay. She got 85%, but her mum only cares about the Read more ...
Saskia Baron
La Mif is French slang for family - it’s the cool kids practice of reversing key words known as ‘verlan’ (itself l’envers backwards) to create their own language. Director Fred Bailif definitely wants to be down with the kids with this drama that uses many of the tools of documentary filmmaking. Set in a care home for troubled teenagers on the outskirts of Geneva, the cast of feisty girls and well-meaning keyworkers are non-professionals. The script draws on improvisation sessions with the performers, who all have experience of living or working in the care Read more ...
Ian Julier
With a predictable Sheku sell-out in the hall, the context of post-Eunice clean-up and current teetering on the brink with Russia lent a strangely unsettling and salutary resonance to the programme of Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto framed by Mussorgsky and Borodin.A palpable sense of coded autobiographical artistic angst, Nature, and festive celebration reflecting both truth and beauty from two different Russian centuries onto the much changed homeland and world view of present times seemed inescapable.In Mussorgsky’s unfinished opera of political and religious intrigue Khovanshchina, Read more ...
David Nice
Two Royal Opera staples, Verdi's La traviata and Puccini’s Tosca, now come round with too much frequency for critical coverage. It looks like Director of Opera Oliver Mears’ Rigoletto will do the same. Yet the production’s September 2021 debut was clouded by routine performances from its protagonist baritone and tenor Duke of Mantua, so a second visit was due to see if fresh casting might make a difference.It has, and very excitingly. True, we no longer have Royal Opera Music Director Antonio Pappano’s surest guidance and illumination in the pit. Stefano Montanari is in many respects Pappano’ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Suddenly bogus-identity stories are all the rage. Netflix has been scoring big with Inventing Anna, the story of fake heiress Anna Delvey, as well as the The Tinder Swindler, a cautionary tale about a high-rolling conman who scams money from women he meets online.Meanwhile the BBC has brought us Chloe, screenwriter Alice Seabright’s drama about a woman who cloaks herself in a new identity to investigate the death of her childhood friend. Once again, Chloe is about the obsessional allure of the web. It all begins with Becky Green (Erin Doherty) poring over the seemingly gilded life of Chloe Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Carey Crim’s 2017 play arrives from the US at north London's Park Theatre trailing a feminist playwriting award for its dissection of what happens when a smart college senior raised by two women starts to question her parentage. Eleanor wants to know who her biological father was and to this end has employed a private investigator. Her mother Allison is aghast. What will Eleanor do if what she unearths about her father is not what she hopes for, and indeed is abhorrent to her?Cracks begin to appear almost immediately in (Caucasian) Allison’s relationship with her long-term partner Nadine, an Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
There are moments when nothing can – or should – stand in the way of the sheer expressive and communicative power of music. Only a few days ago, Gidon Kremer had changed the programme for his 75th birthday concert at Wigmore Hall, to include a short section of pieces by two Ukrainian composers. “The whole world is focused on the dramatic events in Ukraine,” said Kremer.His performance of the first of the two pieces, a four-minute Requiem for solo violin by Igor Loboda, could not have been more deeply soulful. The piece is based on a folksong about the river Dnieper, was written in Read more ...