Reviews
David Nice
It was an awesome start, those three notes from the cellos even before Wagner's famous "Tristan" chord inspiring more deep emotion than the whole of the previous evening's Bellini I puritani. Somehow, though the end left me dry-eyed, and so did the rest of an undeniably impressive evening. Antonio Pappano gets magnificent sounds from his London Symphony Orchestra, but here felt like his predecessor Simon Rattle in hitting too hard at times, albeit with more flexibility. And with the Metropolitan Opera screening all too fresh in the memory, this Tristan and Isolde already had an impossible Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A couple of years ago, on a drive through the picture book hills and lakes of Connemara, my pal (his car, his driving, his choice) played a compilation of Frank Sinatra’s hits on the music system. He sang along lustily, as I contemplated the contrast with the landscape and wondered about how long it would be before I could suggest a bit of Van Morrison, The Pogues, Val Doonican…Because I’ve never really got "The Chairman of the Board". I see what others see, but it’s all too clean, too consciously produced, too overweening in its sheer Frankness for me to engage. Every song was Sinatra first Read more ...
Tim Cumming
“Guys, don’t grow old gracefully… it wouldn’t suit you,” The Who’s Pete Townshend told the Rolling Stones at their induction to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. They listened. Fast-forward some four decades to 2026, and the surviving Stones have eschewed any state of grace for a raucous, almost confrontational new album in Foreign Tongues that bubbles over with energy and purpose. It picks up where their studio comeback Hackney Diamonds left off and turns it all up a few notches.However, a word of warning: if the “loudness wars” of modern-day production get you down, you’ll need to Read more ...
David Nice
When it was last staged at the Royal Opera 34 years ago, 33-year-old Bellini's swansong felt like a baggy monster barely justified by some brilliant singing (chiefly from June Anderson and Dmitri Hvorostovsky). Lisette Oropesa now adds remarkable acting to the star vehicle, but even Richard Jones can't do that much with an unwieldy drama, despite his usual signature elements and symmetries. The verdict remains that theatrically one-dimensional bel canto museum pieces like this are best done in concert.Bellini did pull the drama off, with a concise series of dramatic confrontations, in his Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Lenny Henry’s latest foray into live performance takes him back to his comedy roots, after several years doing theatre and television work. Still at Large, which I saw at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, is part stand-up, part storytelling as he talks about his life and career.He starts by bringing us up to date with what has been happening since he last toured – including winning a BAFTA and being knighted by the late Queen. Not bad for a career which started with him doing impressions on the television talent show New Faces, and later included Henry co-founding Comic Relief and appearing in Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
Violence against women – it’s horrible, and horribly familiar. Let’s make a list: everyday sexism, coercive control, physical attacks, mind games, casual cruelty, double standards, victim shaming, gaslighting, constant undermining, sexual manipulation, domestic abuse, gross neglect, femicide, grooming, harassment, unwanted touching, catcalling… It’s a long list, exhausting, but hardly exhaustive. So how can you dramatise this in a 90-minute play?Award-winning playwright Sophie Swithinbank’s gruelling new drama, Sting, which is currently playing in the Young Vic’s studio space, takes its place Read more ...
David Nice
There was so much to be thankful for throughout the three days I spent at the Aldeburgh Festival this year. First, of course, to have struck gold in so many of the concerts I caught was lucky enough in itself. But the context has never felt more vital as breezes cooled the beach at Aldeburgh and the Alde estuary at Snape while London sweltered in unnaturally high temperatures and a humidity quite different from the fresh airs of the Suffolk coast. My last afternoon, after an emotional workout in Aldeburgh's Jubilee Hall (see below), was simply magical: a walk from Snape towards Iken that Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Fifty years since Benjamin Britten died, and his operas are still in repertory: half a dozen of them at least. It’s a tribute to his theatrical, as much as to his musical, genius that these works still punch their weight on the stage as much as on disc; and perhaps none of them punches it harder than Billy Budd, which Glyndebourne are reviving in Michael Grandage’s spectacular production from 2010.In Billy Budd, as in Peter Grimes, Britten’s tragic agent is the sea. But whereas in Grimes the sea is purely the mechanism behind events on land, in Budd it is all around, an image of life and our Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
One sometimes finds oneself wondering whether Harlan Coben is an author or a set of AI procedures designed to manufacture plots of ludicrous twistiness. Whatever he or it is, it’s managed to infatuate Netflix and Prime Video, who can’t stop turning this stuff into TV wallpaper (The Stranger, The Woods, Shelter etc). Richard Armitage quite often stars in them.Armitage isn’t in I Will Find You, but most of the usual Coben-esque traits are in evidence. There are frequent enigmatic flashbacks to past events which have paved the way for the present-day action, there are missing persons and altered Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Language is a weapon in the RSC’s vigorous adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac – we feel viscerally that wordplay is just one letter away from swordplay, and verbal discord can result in death. Co-adaptor Debris Stevenson cut her teeth on the Grime poetry scene, and brings a raw, abrasive energy to this love story for word nerds that transforms poets into warriors as Cyrano strives for the survival of the wittiest. Jamie Lloyd’s production of Martin Crimp’s rap battle-style Cyrano de Bergerac seven years ago felt definitive, yet this Cyrano more than holds its own. It’s proof once Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHEd O’Brien Blue Morpho (Transgressive)
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The last thing theartsdesk on Vinyl thought it needed was a solo album from Radiohead’s guitarist but Blue Morpho, Ed O’Brien’s second album, spikes expectations. The opening “Incantations” is fab, a low-rolling, bongo-tastic thing hazed in mysticism, like a particularly stoned offcut from Plant & Page’s No Quarter project. The album was, apparently, a healing exercise for O’Brien, who was having brain doldrums. It feels that way, lightness touched with sadness, like that Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
Terrorists are monsters. Or so we are told – pure evil. Well, it makes a good story. Even if it isn’t completely true. Actually, most political assassins are quite ordinary young men, often troubled, often vulnerable, unsure of themselves and so prone to being led by others. American playwright Rajiv Joseph takes this insight and applies it to the Serb terrorists whose actions precipitated the First World War. First staged in New York in November last year, this wild dark comedy is now on the Royal Court’s main stage in a fizzing, occasionally eye-popping, production by director Lyndsey Read more ...