Reviews
Heather Neill
Even in its successful early days Wycherley’s 1675 comedy was notorious, but it was considered too lewd to be staged at all between the mid-Eighteenth Century and 1924. Although the play has found an affectionate place in the canon in more recent times, it makes a kind of sense to transpose the goings on of louche Restoration aristocrats to the era of the Bright Young Things, the time of its rediscovery. And the theme of the role of women, their desires and frustrations, has a continuing up-to-date resonance which adaptors Morphic Graffiti (director Luke Fredericks and designer Stewart Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Recently the world has been entertained by the shameless amateur theatricals from some of Australia’s lavishly-paid cricketers, but Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country transports us back to a harsher, crueller Australia, where men might have justifiably shed a tear as they scraped a hard living from the land and broiled under a crushing sun. Set in 1929, the film also depicts a world where brutish racism was taken for granted, and Aboriginal workers were treated little better than farm animals.At its core is the tightly-wound, powerfully dramatic story of Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris), a stockman Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It was 2011 when Gregory Porter made his first London appearances at Pizza Express in Dean Street. That club has a capacity just over 100, and yet it only seems like yesterday. Last night that same honeyed voice was filling the cavernous 5,272-seater Royal Albert Hall, on the first of 14 UK dates in big halls, with repertoire mostly associated with Nat King Cole, backed by his regular quartet, but also by the 70-piece London Studio Orchestra playing opulent arrangements by Vince Mendoza.Back in 2011, the buzz about the uniqueness of Porter’s voice was only just starting. The canny director of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Can you find a more extensive and comprehensive rundown of monthly vinyl releases than theartsdesk on Vinyl? We can’t. But then we would say that. Don’t believe us, though; below we surf punk, techno, film soundtracks, folk, major label boxset retrospectives, avant-garde electronica, pop, R&B and tons more. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHBelako Render Me Numb, Trivial Violence (Belako)Basque four-piece Belako create the most exciting new version of indie rock that theartsdesk on Vinyl has heard in a long while. In fact, it’s belittling to term it "indie" for this is a galloping hybrid that Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Ordeal by Innocence belongs to a new and, you hope, short-lived sub-genre. The only other stablemate is All the Money in the World. Both were in the can and good to go when very serious sexual allegations were made against a member of the cast. For the latter, Ridley Scott reshot every scene which featured Kevin Spacey, subbing in Christopher Plummer. For BBC One’s now annual serving of an Agatha Christie drama, everyone came back to redo the bits which previously contained Ed Westwick and now have Christian Cooke (pictured below). Fortunately most of these seem to be interiors, as the Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Civilisation is under threat from a bunch of religious rednecks, and it’s your job as the new Deputy Sheriff of fictional Hope County to right the wrongs of a year-long silent coup initiated by Eden’s Gate, a fanatical doomsday cult, intent on purging sinners and imposing their law on the land. There's a Brexit gag in there somewhere.Set in America, a first for the franchise, Far Cry 5 serves up more of the same freedom to explore a massive open world. It’s a beautifully detailed environment filled with pine forests, mountain ranges, shimmering lakes, rickety old towns and winding roads. A Read more ...
Matthew Wright
When it came out in 1993, Trainspotting was probably the most shocking novel since Lady Chatterley's Lover. It’s rumoured to have missed out on a Booker shortlisting because it offended the judges. Certainly, for your reviewer, a Surrey teenager at the time, its savage crackling humour and eye-popping junkie melodrama was the stuff of gleeful fantasy, especially when canonical comic fiction generally meant Jane Austen. However, a quarter-century on, Dead Men’s Trousers is the sixth novel to tell the story of (some of) the principal Trainspotting quartet of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“When I was singing at my best, I was the essence of English song. And that was all I ever really wanted.” It’s said without pride and in a matter-of-fact manner. The speaker is Shirley Collins in the documentary The Ballad of Shirley Collins. Issued on DVD in a package with a CD collecting music which defines parts of her world, the film tracks a person balancing certainty about who she is and was with an enviable level-headedness.The Ballad of Shirley Collins is also issued as an album – a quasi-soundtrack of the film. But the version to get is the book-bound CD/DVD configuration Read more ...
Michael Rakowitz: The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, Fourth Plinth review - London's new guardian
Katherine Waters
Fifteen years ago on a cold grey Saturday in mid-February, Trafalgar Square was filled with people marching to Hyde Park in opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq. A million people gathered in London. Three times that number turned out in Rome. That day, across Europe and the rest of the world, between six to eleven million people participated in the largest coordinated anti-war rally in history. The scale of the movement was unprecedented. Protest globalised. Just over a month later air strikes took out Iraqi observation posts and troops crossed over the borders. The invasion of Iraq Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Dylan’s Gospel years inspired and rankled in unequal measure – with the critical brickbats and audience boos often drowning out the strength and beauty of the impassioned musical ministries delivered by Dylan between 1979 and 1981, gathering around him his five-strong chorus of gospel singers, and a crack band that included Little Feet guitarist Fred Tackett, bassist Tim Drummond, Muscle Shoals keyboardist Spooner Oldham and pianist Terry Young, and veteran drummer Jim Keltner.Filmed at Toronto’s Massey Hall and in Buffalo, New York, Dylan’s gospel shows have long been a bootlegger’s holy Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Ros and Ray are old hippies made good. She’s a hard-bitten, hard-working teacher in an inner-city Pennsylvania school where her pupils rob 7-Elevens on Fridays and the staff have a betting pool on how many times she gets called "white bitch". He’s a member of the one percent, a corporate heavyweight who’s always trying to see “the bigger picture” but who drives a Merc and – by his own admission – pulled himself out of poverty to become a wealthy financier.Even on the cusp of retirement they’re still besotted with each other, their love conversely made stronger by the frank Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
One year to Brexit, a seemingly endless winter chill and Londoners need soul food, badly. I prescribe an evening of total immersion in The Marriage of Figaro. ENO’s second revival of Fiona Shaw’s sassy, probing production (with revival director Peter Relton) is splendidly cast, warmly performed and chock-full of delights.It’s finely paced, varied, and sound of dramatic judgment, as well as full of detail – the character vignettes in the chorus are a treat. The palace’s many walls in Peter McKintosh’s set often whirl (we’ve got a revolve and we’re gonna use it!), yet never too much. It’s fresh Read more ...