Reviews
Adam Sweeting
Though set in a futuristic (although not by much) world in which information technology has almost taken over the human psyche, Anon still relies on a crumpled whisky-drinking gumshoe for its protagonist. In this case, the relict of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe is detective Sal Frieland, played by Clive Owen with his habitual air of laconic disappointment. If anything good should happen in Sal’s world, he knows it won’t last.Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, auteur of sci-fi classic Gattaca and screenwriter of The Truman Show, Anon decants us into an identikit North American city – Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The first thing that greets the audience in the foyer for Danny Baker's new show, Good Time Charlie's Back!, which I saw at Princes Hall in Aldershot, is the merchandise stall, selling various items; T-shirts for £20, programmes at £10 (pre-signed!), and mugs for £8. But despite this naked determination to relieve punters of their wads, no one can accuse Baker of not giving value for money, as the show last three hours, and counting. Boy, can this man talk.On stage there is a large acreen, straddled by two smaller screens with what turns out to be a list of the subjects in his seemingly Read more ...
Owen Richards
Deep in an unnamed desert, a violent and psychedelic retribution is sought. The aptly named Revenge is a brutally rewarding experience, bringing classic horror and exploitation tropes kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It is the debut feature from French writer/director Coralie Fargeat, who combines a low opinion of men, visual panache and disturbing imagination to create a taut, bright thrill ride.We begin at a villa, where the smug, rich Richard (Kevin Jannsens, pictured below right) has brought his mistress Jen (Matilda Lutz, pictured below left) for some fun before a hunting Read more ...
Katie Colombus
They say that behind every successful man is a strong woman. The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is as much – if not more so – the championing of the unsung hero in this story of the famous early modernist artist, Marc Chagall. His wife, Bella – early muse, sharer of world views and buckets of milk and mother of their daughter Ida, is paid tribute to, for her devotion and dedication to her husband's art.The birth of surrealism is played out on a small stage, made up of geometric shapes from the hyper-colour backdrop, wooden structure set and the angles at which the actors lean, holding onto ropes to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The freeing of a plane-load of hostages by Israeli forces at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976 produced an instant spate of movie versions. Raid on Entebbe starred Peter Finch and Charles Bronson, Victory at Entebbe offered gainful employment to Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, while the Israeli-made Operation Thunderbolt featured Klaus Kinski as German hijacker Wilfried Böse.In this new update by Brazilian director José Padilha (RoboCop, Narcos), the Böse role goes to Daniel Brühl, playing opposite a disappointingly brittle Rosamund Pike as his partner in ideologically- Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Barney Norris is as prolific as he is talented. Barely out of his twenties, he has written a series of excellent plays – the award-winning Visitors, follow-ups Eventide and While We’re Here – as well as a couple of novels and lots of poetry. After collaborating in setting up a theatre company, Up in Arms, he now works as a prestigious resident playwright at Keble College, Oxford, and has still found time to write a study of the dramas of veteran playwright Peter Gill. Named as one of the 1000 most influential Londoners by the Evening Standard, his latest play, Nightfall, has just Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Much has been made of this adaptation of The Woman in White having an especial relevance for our times. Its concern with the power dynamics of gender relations was certainly hammered home right from the beginning, as Jessie Buckley uttered its loaded opening question, “How is it men crush women time and time again and go unpunished?”, effectively delivered to us, the audience, to boot. But despite such references being periodically dropped into the dialogue – and that opening sentence certainly didn’t come from the Wilkie Collins novel, either – as its five episodes developed, Fiona Seres’s Read more ...
Katie Colombus
There is a sense of loyalty from the Brighton audience awaiting Hofesh Shechter’s new work. They have seen his company here in 2009, for the Brighton Festival commission of The Art of Not Looking Back, and the infamous Political Mother premiered here for the Festival in 2010.There was a feeling that people were waiting to be wowed – and they were not disappointed. The piece opens with a person being shot against a dark wall, which then divides into two. Immediately my thoughts are drawn to the divisive Israel/Palestinian conflict, a theme which the Israeli-born choreographer has dabbled in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In a manner uncannily reminiscent of last year’s Season 6, this latest edition of Homeland spent at least half the series trying to get warmed up for the dash to the tape over the final furlongs. Viewers finding themselves slipping into a catatonic stupor when confronted with yet more bombastic rantings from the crushingly dull ultra-right broadcaster Brett O’Keefe (Jake Weber), or those uninspired by the personality vacuum that was FBI agent Dante Allen (Morgan Spector), probably left this series for dead weeks ago.But from episode six, as the shape of the Russian conspiracy to sabotage the Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
If you came to this programme knowing nothing about the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, you may have learned a few things. That he died, tragically and rather dramatically, of a massive heart attack during a first night performance of one his own ballets. That he was "interested" in sex and death, and frequently choreographed violent forms of both in his ballets. That in later life he had a wife and daughter whom he loved. And that he was quite a significant 20th-century choreographer – though this last you'll have picked up more from the fact that this programme was aired at prime culture Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Pinkshinyultrablast might be a long way from their hometown of St Petersburg, but in recent years they’ve built themselves up in England as one of the more bizarre and original bands in today’s psych/shoegaze revival, and on the day their third album Miserable Miracles is released, they hit the north for a night of fuzz and electronic trickery.Support comes from Warm Digits, whose propulsive set has the room hooked from the off. Mostly playing tracks from their 2017 LP Wireless World, drummer Andrew Hodson and guitarist Steve Jefferies don’t let the groove drop, with their songs forming, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Anecdotal story-telling wrapped up in hypnotic prose, Christie Watson’s narrative is a gentle, emotive five-part layered package of reflection and indignation. It is part memoir-autobiography, part history of nursing (Indian, Greek, Byzantine and African from millennia ago, not to mention Florence Nightingale and her revelatory common sense), and underlying all a polemic in persuasive praise of its crucial importance. There is also rage at what is happening to the NHS today, politically, socially and economically, and what it shows about the state of Britain.We are whisked through the Read more ...