Reviews
Demetrios Matheou
With The Laundromat Steven Soderbergh is trying to do for the Panama Papers what The Big Short did for the 2008 financial crash, namely offer an entertaining mix of explanation, exposé, black comedy and righteous anger. Sadly, it doesn’t come close. Soderbergh is an intelligent filmmaker, adept at tackling complicated, global issues (Traffik) and righting wrongs (Erin Brockovich). He’d seem a perfect fit for the whistle-blowing scandal in 2015 that blew the lid off billions of dollars of tax evasion, conducted on behalf of the rich and powerful through the use of Read more ...
Katherine Waters
There are two moons in Night Bathers, 2019 (pictured below) One is set in the sky, a great soupy plate with a greenish fringe creating an ugly smear of white across the night. The other is a treacherously hazy rectangle, floating like a cloud above a reclining bather — so inexplicable it could double as a cataract. The latter is, perhaps, a reflection of the former, but at a surreal remove — no reflection looks like that, no reflected light would fall there. The twinned moons, however — real and oneiric — neatly explain the power of Doig’s paintings.Fourteen are now on show across two Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Mother of Him was written a decade ago, but its most prescient moment happens in the first five minutes of Max Lindsay's production at the Park Theatre. Brenda Kapowitz (Tracy-Ann Oberman) presents a sheaf of papers to Robert (Simon Hepworth, excellent), a family friend who’s also her 17-year-old son’s lawyer. “Report cards, awards,” she explains. “Grade six one doesn’t seem to be here but that shouldn’t make a difference.” We’ve just learned that the son in question, Matthew (Scott Folan, struggling gamely with a Canadian accent), has raped three women. Robert’s doing his best to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Learning support officer. Student. Chip shop owner. Mobile caterer. Gym owner. These were the day jobs of some of the volunteers featured in this week’s portfolio of tales on BBC Two from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, who would all doubtless deny that they do anything heroic. For the people they rescue, they most certainly do.If there was a moral in this week’s programme, it was “be prepared”. Mind you, that's probably the moral every week. For instance, if you were going windsurfing at Porthcawl, you ought to do a bit of research on its unusually powerful tides, which can rise 10 Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“It’s nice to make money – lots of money,” said Michel Cohen, former high-flying New York art dealer turned debtor, jailbird and fugitive. He made oodles of the stuff and then lost it all, leaving a string of wealthy art collectors and galleries to lick their wounds over the colossal debts he never repaid.Vanessa Engle’s film for the BBC's Arena strand was a portrait of the man and the big-money art scene of the 1990s, as well as a barely-believable detective story as the documentarist tracked down her quarry after he’d disappeared in Rio de Janeiro 16 years ago. Vengeful creditors and Read more ...
David Nice
It was said of the Venetian audiences randy for the satirical antique of Handel's first great operatic cornucopia in 1709 that "a stranger who should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would have imagined they were all distracted". The same could be said of spectators witnessing this Royal Opera cast for Agrippina going way over the top, and mostly not in the best way: surprising given the rigour with which Barrie Kosky usually directs his singers. Remember - once seen, who could forget it? - Max Reinhardt's visually beautiful film of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which the Read more ...
Florence Hallett
If leafing through the pages of Vogue is a soothing balm, Wonderful Things is a bracing full-body immersion. Though it builds on the V&A’s reputation for blockbuster fashion exhibitions, this show, dedicated to one of the most celebrated photographers of the day, follows no known formula, steering a course somewhere between retrospective and walk-in fashion magazine, without being either. At a time when curators’ voices have a tendency to be dominant to the point of intrusive, falling down the rabbit hole of Tim Walker’s fantasy world feels a bit like stepping inside the photographer’s Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The only novel by the Hungarian dramatist Ödön von Horváth, Youth Without God was written in exile after he fled Anschluss Vienna and published in 1938, shortly before his death. In the English-speaking world, we know von Horváth for his plays, largely through the translations of Christopher Hampton, and it’s Hampton who has adapted the novel for its UK premiere at the Coronet (now minus its Print Room moniker), where Stephanie Mohr’s production plays very satisfyingly, making the most of the venue’s spacious, uncrowded stage as well as its striking sense of period dereliction. When it Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Proxima is a very special, very beautiful space movie, one of those that are more concerned with the bread-and-butter reality of getting people into space – practically, emotionally, psychologically – than with the starry shenanigans themselves. Think The Right Stuff, the Eighties classic charting the dawn of America's space programme, only this time with a female astronaut battling both sexism and the emotional ties of motherhood on the way to the launchpad. Written and directed by France's Alice Winocour and with Eva Green giving an Oscar-worthy performance in the lead, this Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
While bands such as The Birthday Party, Siouxsie and the Banshees and, especially, Bauhaus had a hand in inventing goth music at the start of the Eighties, it was The Sisters of Mercy who defined it. Their combination of black clad cowboy shtick, mirror shades and dry ice worked a treat. In recent years, there have been rumours that the band’s live shows are less than impressive, mentions of a tendency to focus on unreleased material while dressed in leisurewear. Happily, this was certainly not the case tonight.The Sisters’ output, especially their early records, has dated well; gritty, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ed Byrne's new show takes a philosophical bent as he muses on middle age and fatherhood. But don't worry, he's not getting soft at the age of 47 – he's as sarcastic, caustic and self-deprecating as ever in If I'm Honest...He starts by telling us how vital comedy is to him, but this isn't about how it works as therapy for some stand-ups; in truth it's because it gets him out of the house and to places where people actually listen to him. Not for the first time in the evening, Byrne neatly upends our expectations of where a joke is going.He thought fatherhood might give his life more Read more ...
Stephanie Sy-Quia
October 5th in the United States is a day for righteous rage. In 2016 it marked the release of the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape in which Donald Trump made his now-infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment. In 2017, it was the date the New York Times published their first story on Hollywood king-pin producer Harvey Weinstein. In 2018 it was the date on which the Senate saw fit to advance Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s work concerns Weinstein, but is bookended by Trump and Kavanaugh. She Said tells the story of their investigation for Read more ...