Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Brian James’ opening cut is “The Twist”. Not the Sixties dance-craze song, but a melodic guitar-driven rocker simpatico with what Australian bands The Hoodoo Gurus, The New Christs and The Screaming Tribesman were dealing in during the late 1980s. Detroit’s slash-and-burn is in there, as is a pop sensibility. “Slow it Down”, Side Ones third cut, sounds like an alternate-universe hit single: one where edgy pop-rock ruled. Side Two opens with “Ain't That a Shame”, a mid-tempo, moody outing with the feel of the Johnny Thunders of “Subway Train” and “It’s Not Enough”.Back in the Britain of 1990 Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Inevitably, the story begins and (almost) ends with Las Meninas. Inspired by the art and life of Diego Velázquez, Amy Sackville tops and tails her third novel with his endlessly enigmatic group portrait from 1656. It shows the Spanish royal household, their dwarves, a mastiff, a perplexing reflection of the King and Queen in a mirror – and the court painter himself, trapped forever in this nest of “sometimes impossible frames”. The painting ensnares us in a hall of mirrors, a labyrinth of gazes. Like a half-opened door into the mysteries of perception, Las Meninas has invited a host of Read more ...
David Nice
"What could be more serious than married life?" asked Richard Strauss, whose operas became a surprising pillar of Glyndebourne's repertoire some time after the early days dramatised in David Hare's play. "Honour" might have been the answer of conductor Fritz Busch, who unlike Strauss never made accommodations with the Nazi regime. The two ingredients, personal devotion and public integrity, are interlaced with surprising shafts of depth as well as elegance in the artistic context of The Moderate Soprano. This reviewer certainly didn't leave the Duke of York's Theatre at the end of Jeremy Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
A new William Forsythe ballet is quite a coup for English National Ballet; the choreographer hasn't made a piece in Britain in 20 years. Premiered last night as part of ENB's Voices of America triple bill at Sadler's Wells, Forsythe's Playlist (Track 1, 2) makes a rousing finale to a punchy programme of contemporary ballet delivered with the style we've now come to expect from this classy, confident company.Playlist (Track 1,2) is bravura neo-classical ballet and it shows off the chops of ENB's superb crop of male soloists. Forsythe was convinced to make it after seeing the company perform Le Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Frederic Rzewski marked his 80th birthday with a visit to the Wigmore Hall, for the premiere of his aptly titled Ages. The pianist Igor Levit is an ardent champion of Rzewski’s music and was the prime mover behind the commission (though it was financed by the Wigmore Hall with the support of Annette Scawen Morreau), and the piece was clearly written to showcase his many strengths. Levit is a master of atmosphere, and has a keen sense of musical drama, both of which were much in evidence, and much needed, in this sprawling, hour-long work.Rzewski (pictured below) has always been an eclectic Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Stones do it. U2 too. It takes immense and lordly clout for a touring band to breeze into town and each night summon a major recording artist to step onstage for some party fun. For Arcade Fire’s first night at Wembley Arena it was Chrissie Hynde. For the second, Jarvis Cocker lolloped up in a cream twin-breast linen suit to deliver that radio-friendly anthem, “Cunts Are Still Running the World”. Plus ça change, as they say in Montreal.From “Everything Now” to “Wake Up”, this was a sensational spectacle. Arcade Fire have taken the concept of performing in the round and, with the aid of an Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Chicago has been on, in one form or another, for a very long time. The original Broadway production in the Seventies ran for 936 performances; the 1997 London revival was the longest-running American musical in West End history; and it feels like Cuba Gooding Jr’s face has been grinning out from escalator video screens on the tube for an age. This revival at the Phoenix Theatre is uneven, but eventually finds its groove and packs a real punch of a finale.The story, as usual with this kind of musical, is somewhat thin: wannabe vaudeville star Roxie Hart (Sarah Soetart) shoots her lover dead Read more ...
David Nice
Anyone who's seen Richard Jones's rigorous production before will remember the makeover – Katerina Izmailova, bored and brutalised housewife released by sex and murder from her shackles, having her drab bedroom expanded and redecorated in deliberate incongruity with Shostakovich's most shattering orchestral music – and its polar opposite, the near-black horror of convicts in trucks by the river on their way to Siberia. The overall focus and ironic symmetries are still there, if not some of the fine tuning, an amazing 14 years on from the first airing, and even though Eva-Maria Westbroek's was Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In the late 1970s the British establishment sustained a bloody nose. Roland Huntford published his debunking of Captain Scott and Anthony Blunt was outed as the Fourth Man, while the Old Etonian Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe was tried for conspiracy to murder. That last story will be told in A Very English Scandal later this month, but in the meantime BBC Four has exhumed Law and Order, the television drama which lifted a lid on corruption in the police and the law.The Home Office got very hot under the collar about this insurrectionary assault on police probity when it was broadcast. Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
It’s as intricate as it is concise. The depth to the architecture of James MacMillan’s Saxophone Concerto – which was given its world premiere this week by saxophonist Amy Dickson and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra – is quite astounding, and all the more so for being packed into three five-minute movements. As with much of MacMillan’s music, the work is inspired by Scottish folk tunes, which certainly takes the saxophone into unusual territory in this concerto for solo instrument and string orchestra.The first movement, based on a march, strathspey and reel, is tight and spry, with the solo Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The title signalled what was coming so clearly, it may as well have been called When Bands End Badly: the two camps, the arguments and sniping and the eventual collapse of Culture Club’s US and UK tour to promote an album of new material. It’s hardly a surprise though – this is a band that, history shows, would have benefitted from the visible presence of an armed UN peacekeeping force.What is surprising is the way in which Boy George appears to be cast (by the rest of the band at least, if not explicitly the filmmakers) as the architect of this collapse: a sort of Fred Dibnah to the band’s Read more ...
Veronica Lee
You could be forgiven for not remembering the “coughing major” brouhaha in 2001, coming as it did the day before 9/11, when we had rather more pressing matters to attend to than a contestant being accused of cheating on television quiz show. But playwright James Graham has mined an entertaining confection from the affair and its subsequent court case in 2003.The matter concerns Charles Ingram (Gavin Spokes) a British Army major who appeared on a show never explicitly named in Quiz but which we know to be Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, presented in the UK by Chris Tarrant and an Read more ...