Reviews
Boyd Tonkin
Antonio Pappano’s pairing for last night’s Barbican concert intrigued – and, initially, baffled – me. Shostakovich’s Fifth: a clear choice, given the London Symphony Orchestra’s recent stellar accounts of the Russian’s major symphonies. Its preface, however, came in the unpredictable form of Korngold’s violin concerto, under the bow of the supremely elegant and tasteful Vilde Frang.Between Hollywood and Leningrad, however, Pappano and his high-achieving band struck up a truly engrossing dialogue. Questions of kitsch and sentiment, of freedom and compulsion, of authenticity and artifice, Read more ...
Saskia Baron
“Since when was getting older an honour?” asks Tereza, rightly suspicious when she finds officials nailing up a cheap garland around her front door and presenting her with a medal. This is Brazil, sometime in the near future, and the government has decided that anyone over 75 is an economic burden on younger workers. No matter how fit you still are, you must hand in your work clothes and accept being shipped off to ‘the colony’ on a caged truck dubbed the wrinkle wagon. Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail is a dystopian fable, not dissimilar in its plot and casting to the more sombre Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
This entertaining, gorgeous-looking film within a film, directed and written by multi-talented Turkish-Italian Ferzan Özpetek (he’s also directed operas and written several novels), starts in the present day with a large, noisy lunch party. Özpetek plays himself, a director who’s planning a movie, Diamanti, with this company of actresses - a vaginodrome, as one calls it. It’s about the power of women, he tells them. “Is it science-fiction?” asks one, sarcastically. He hands out scripts and everyone reads quietly.Özpetek moved to Rome from Istanbul in 1976 and his meta-film, based on his own Read more ...
aleks.sierz
One of the most resonant contemporary slogans is “Build bridges not walls”. Because it applies to the personal as well the political, it has the force of simplicity and directness. The way that building walls can be psychologically destructive, cutting a person off from emotional connection, is exemplified in Mancunian playwright Kit Withington’s new family play, Heart Wall, currently on the main stage at the Bush Theatre. Once part of this venue’s Emerging Writers’ Group, Withington now returns with a distinctly Northern voice – and a work which has power and subtlety, but also some problems Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day 2025 is this Saturday! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been playing through exclusive RSD goodies. Check the reviews. Then check head to your local record shop! See you amongst it. I apologise for the lack of current pop, particularly female pop singers, both established and rising. I spent time chasing such material but none arrived. Our RSD Special, then, lacks this tasty sliver of seasoning, but is still extremely tasty. That aside, DIVE IN!THEARTSDESK ON VINYL’S CHOICEST CUT OF RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2026Robert Plant with Suzi Dian Saving Grace: All That Glitters Read more ...
Veronica Lee
As a catchline for a tour, “40 years of arsing about in comedy” is a grabber. That’s how Harry Enfield describes Harry Enfield and No Chums!, and it certainly shows that he is still, well, arsing about to great effect as he casts an eye over his life and careerThe show is a collection of anecdotes about his life and some of the characters he has voiced in television programmes such as Spitting Image, or created for shows such as Saturday Live and Harry Enfield & Chums.He comes on stage as King Charles, whom he has spoofed in The Windsors. The references to cancer are unexpected, but then Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Nine-year-old-year-old Callie-Rose (the extraordinarily talented Australian actor Lily LaTorre; Run Rabbit Run) needs the Wi-Fi to do her homework. The trouble is, there's no signal because her dad, a reticent cowboy named Dusty (an excellent Josh O’Connor), is living in a trailer on a FEMA campsite, his farm having burned down in wildfires.This quiet, beautiful film, directed by Max Walker-Silverman (A Love Song) with a great score by Jake Xerxes Fussell and James Elkington, is set in southern Colorado. There’s an atmosphere of John Prine-esque melancholy running through it, and indeed one Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was back in 2019 when The Capture made its debut on BBC One, with writer Ben Chanan skilfully exploiting the sinister potential of deep-fake technology and ubiquitous mass surveillance conducted by the authorities. But if it seemed like sci-fi at the beginning, the new third series lands in a world where ever-evolving gadgetry has made all this stuff not just entirely feasible but almost commonplace. In the opening episode we got a quick warm-up about the marvels of identity-snatching and image manipulation in a scene at Heathrow airport where a suspect kept changing his appearance Read more ...
Jon Turney
Browsing second-hand books is one of life’s reliable gentle pleasures. Nicholas Royle, though, in Finders, Keepers: The Secret Life of Second-Hand Books, takes it to the next level. And this is his third book relating the many small adventures he has devised to augment the basic activity of accumulating more and more books.Small? Definitely. Does the book harbour a train ticket? Royle takes the train indicated, if the ticket is affordable, and reads some of it en route. A street map is even better, as it allows Royle to indulge one of his other obsessions: walking. If there’s a house address Read more ...
Robert Beale
The Northern Chamber Orchestra is unusual in that it plays almost always without a conductor. It’s been doing that for nearly 60 years, and there’s a unique frisson to be had from experiencing orchestral music-making done almost entirely through eye contact, careful listening and telepathy, as real chamber music always is.At the same time, with larger numbers of players and complicated scores, it’s a bit of a high-wire act. Its concert at King’s School Macclesfield was a demonstration of how well it can work and how testing the concept can be.A Haydn symphony is sure ground for the NCO: in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Do You Believe in Magic.” “You Didn't Have to be so Nice”. “Daydream.” “Did You Ever Have to Make up Your Mind?” “Summer in the City.” “Rain on the Roof.” “Nashville Cats.”The first seven singles by The Lovin’ Spoonful are all great, really great, and all were hits. Top Ten in the band’s US home. International hits too. Arriving in a torrent over July 1965 to November 1966, they help define Steve Boone, Joe Butler, John Sebastian, and Zal Yanovsky as integral to America’s riposte to the Beatles-kindled British Invasion of the US charts. The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” had been released in Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that Tori Amos might inhabit a music genre populated by one artist. That doesn’t make her tunes indescribable though. There’s the mezzo-soprano vocal range backed by neo-classical piano, a bit of a jazzy groove and a light sprinkling of Kate Bush vibes. However, once Amos’ music has been experienced, any and all of her songs are instantly recognisable as coming from her canon, no matter whether they’ve been heard before or not.This has built Tori Amos a significant international following and the auditorium of Birmingham’s Symphony Hall was all but Read more ...