Reviews
william.ward
Even more than some of Shakespeare’s other histories, Julius Caesar inevitably offers itself to “topical interpretation”, a Rorschach test of a play which directors short of an original idea can extrapolate to project their own political aperçus upon. Over the last century, Ancient Rome’s most famous autocrat has been endlessly re-spun as a leery dictator of the modern totalitarian variety.Angus Jackson (overall director of the RSC’s Rome MMXVII season now at the Barbican), has wisely chosen to eschew such modish nonsense and concentrate instead on clarity, drawing out of the text itself all Read more ...
Jasper Rees
This week we were all meant to be gripped by a bunch of ancient geezers nicking diamonds in Hatton Gardens. The postponement of ITV’s nightly four-part drama – the second of four (four!!) different versions of the infamous burglary – is a bit of a mystery. Now you see it on the cover of the Radio Times. Now it’s in mothballs. The beneficiary of this hasty swerve was Bancroft. Originally made for ITV Encore, a channel which is about to become an ex-channel, it has suddenly come in from the cold.What does it say about a drama that was to have been launched in a graveyard where thousands not Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
If this play really were “A Debate in One Sitting” as its author called it in 1909, it would have sunk without trace. “Talk, talk, talk, talk”, complains Hypatia Tarleton (Marli Siu), daughter of an Edwardian underwear magnate. Sick to death of the menfolk talking at her and over her, she longs to be “an active verb”, and we sympathise. One expects loquacity in a Bernard Shaw play but in Misalliance the ideas tumble forth like a river breaking its banks: the evils of Empire and British class snobbery; the benefits of socialism, feminism, physical exercise, free libraries and frank Read more ...
David Nice
Director Richard Jones watched all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone as research for this Almeida production. I've never seen a single one, to the amazement of the American fan on the tube home who saw me reading the programme and, having grown up with the TV series in the early 1960s, told me a lot more about the skill of creator/scriptwriter Rod Serling and which instalments I should seek out. I shall now.The question why may trouble all but diehard enthusiasts as the opening actions unfold and intertwine, but by the end of this giddying evening Twilight Zone virgins may feel they've been Read more ...
Helen Wallace
An icy, wet wind snuck under the door of house number 8 in Fournier Street, where Uri Caine, bundled in coat and woolly hat, conjured Schumann’s darkly powerful "Im Rhein". Beside him, perched on a weaver’s stool, was improvising legend Phil Minton, rasping, whistling and groaning his way through "The wilderness of my life". Caine wove ragtime into plunging storm-tossed sequences, along with polkas, waltzes, blues and honky-tonk; as he plumbed the river’s murky depths, Minton scattered gasped husks of memory upon its surface. Caine’s playing felt too big for the handsome front parlour; but it Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Is there a key to “infinite variety”? The challenge of Cleopatra is to convey the sheer fullness of the role, the sense that it defines, and is defined by only itself: there’s no saying that the glorious tragedy of the closing plays itself out, of course, but its impact surely soars only when the ludic engagements of the first half have drawn us in equally. Monarchs, in the words of Shakespeare’s contemporary John Webster, may “brook no contradiction”, but this Egyptian Queen practically demands it – including self-contradiction, most of all. In Antony and Cleopatra we have a heroine who is Read more ...
theartsdesk on Vinyl 35: Christmas 2017 Special with Pink Floyd, Mariah Carey, ELO, Madness and more
Thomas H. Green
The music business is about to disappear on holiday wholesale and we won’t see hide nor hair of it until mid-January. There’s just time for one last 2017 vinyl celebration. Regular readers should be warned that theartsdesk on Vinyl becomes rather easy-going at this time of year – must be all the Baileys – and prone to making allowances for the odd sliver of cheese and office-party silliness. It’s a Christmas special where, like Christmas itself, truly good music mingles more freely with the “fun” stuff, and music that might just make a good present. Have a top one. Enjoy yourself too much. Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Expectations ran high for Mark Padmore and Mitsuko Uchida in Winterreise. Both singer and pianist are well known for their Schubert, and their deep and intimate relationship with his music was everywhere apparent in this performance of sensitivity and subtly shaded emotion. In a cycle so well documented, there is little room to excel, yet Padmore and Uchida did just that. A directness of expression was key to their success, as if years of accreted sophistication had been stripped from these famous songs, revealing a naked, uncompromising emotion beneath. But there was also a compelling sense Read more ...
Owen Richards
In the most unlikely of places, there is one of the world’s most prolific directors. He has produced over 110 films, he’s mobbed wherever he goes, and he inspired people through the darkest of civil wars; yet outside of Afghanistan, no-one knows the name of Salim Shaheen, the self-proclaimed "Prince of Nothingwood".This documentary, directed by French radio journalist Sonia Kronlund, revels in the surreal nature of the world’s poorest film industry. Salim Shaheen is a whirlwind of bravado – a former army general turned auteur, leading a motley crew of ex-soldiers and sons across Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Chineke! Orchestra has won golden opinions for its ground-breaking work and musical achievement, and Manchester caught up to the extent of a visit from the eight-person Chineke! Ensemble to the Royal Northern College of Music. As with the full orchestra’s performances, the repertoire included its own gesture towards greater recognition of past composers from black and ethnic minority origins – in this case Joseph Boulogne (aka Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges) and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.There are more points of exposure for a chamber group than might be the case with a larger ensemble, so Read more ...
David Nice
After Sakari Oramo's dazzling Sibelius rattlebag with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on the centenary day of Finnish independence, things weren't looking so good for Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia at half time last Thursday (★★★). Then along came the Four Lemminkäinen Legends, an early Sibelius masterpiece teeming with invention and strangeness, long a Salonen speciality. Salonen's own compositions have that ambition on steroids, at least since he discovered California after taking up the reins of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1992. Oramo's championship of his fellow Finn, seven years Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The play that famously got away when one of its stars (quite literally) jumped ship is back. In 1995, Stephen Fry abandoned the West End premiere of Simon Gray's espionage drama Cell Mates, leaving co-star Rik Mayall in the lurch and prompting Gray to write a particularly dyspeptic account of the bizarre goings-on called Fat Chance. Resurfacing for a well-cast Hampstead Theatre revival neither of whose leading men look likely to bolt for the exit, Cell Mates can now be seen for the pecularity that it is: a decidedly English variant on The Odd Couple that seems, weirdly, to leave the actual Read more ...