Reviews
Veronica Lee
You may have thought that the Brexit vote in June would have been manna from heaven for Al Murray as the Pub Landlord, his knucklehead xenophobe creation. But in this uneven and – at two-and-a-half hours – overlong show, the referendum result and what it means for this country is mentioned early on but is hardly the focus of the show.And that's an enormous shame, as Murray's recent shows have put politics front and centre of his act to great and rejuvenating effect for a character that had, for me at least, long become stale and predictable.Let's Go Backwards Together augurs well in this Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It seems morbid, and perhaps even in dubious taste, to create a TV drama franchise focusing on the hideous fate of abducted children and the repercussions this has on their family and friends. Still, ratings are their own reward, and the first series of The Missing (a collaboration between the BBC and the US network Starz) was a critical and commercial success.So welcome to series two, now starring Keeley Hawes and David Morrissey in place of series one's James Nesbitt and Frances O'Connor (they call this an "anthology series"). Our new protagonists are Gemma and Sam Webster. Thanks to Sam's Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Mark Ravenhill’s 1996 Royal Court debut was not the decade’s most shocking piece of theatre, but its title was, and still is, certainly the most annoying for producers and publicists. Under a Victorian law – the Indecent Advertisements Act 1889, amended by the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981 – the word “fuck” is banned from public display. Originally drafted to stamp out explicit adverts by prostitutes in shop windows, the law is still used to ban adverts for a piece of fiction. Hence the asterisk-fest of this play’s title; hence also the tube adverts where the second word is Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“It’s a business opportunity,” explains Jake (Shia LaBoeuf) to dreadlocked, wild-child Star (Sasha Lane). She’s eyeing him up in the aisles of a Midwestern Walmart while he dances around with a rag-tag, stoned young crew to Rihanna’s “We Found Love”. “We go door to door. We sell magazines. Come with us.” Sounds an unlikely proposition.Admittedly, 18-year-old Star doesn’t have much choice in the way of business opportunities. In the first scene, she’s dumpster-diving with two little kids outside that Walmart. Their biggest prize is a frozen bird. After they've hitchhiked home, the toddler sits Read more ...
Helen Wallace
Call it re-analogification, de-digitisation or perhaps just plain reverse-engineering, Icebreaker’s set at Milton Court was all about reclaiming the electronic for hoary-handed instrumentalists. Their skills are well-honed: from Anna Meredith to Steve Martland to Kraftwerk, with an inspired side-order of Scott Walker, they conjured propulsive rhythmic lines and saturated layers of harmony from inauspicious sources – pan-pipes, soprano sax, a single cello, bass drum. Of course, there were electric guitars, keyboards and a stage groaning with amplifiers, but it was a damn sight more interesting Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As an old Sixties lefty brought up on thrillers like The Parallax View, Oliver Stone loves ripping open great American political conspiracies, and inevitably he portrays CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a noble crusader for free speech and democratic accountability against the might of America's intelligence agencies. If you work for the CIA you'll hate Snowden (★★★★), but Stone has fashioned the story into a tense, fast-moving drama which will leave you pondering over what's really justifiable for the greater good.Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Snowden starts out as a sincere young patriot, Read more ...
David Kettle
It’s not often you need a passport to get into a theatre show. But then the journey required to get to Scottish site-specific experts Grid Iron’s Crude does feel like something of a pilgrimage – first get yourself to Dundee, then find the Science Centre car park, and hop on a coach to transport you deep into the restricted, ID-required heart of the city’s port.To an immense industrial hangar, modestly named Shed 36, a mere corner of which has been transformed into a multi-level stage for Crude, Grid Iron’s masterful exploration of the seductive, destructive power of oil. The Edinburgh-based Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The best way to line up the stars is to offer them a chance to act in a play about the theatre. For this, Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser has a good track record: its original West End outing starred Tom Courtney; the 1983 film version had Albert Finney and Courtney again; and a 2015 BBC television version had Sirs Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen. Now it’s the turn of Ken Stott and Reece Shearsmith to enthrall audiences in this account of theatrical backstage life, which first took up West End residence in 1980.Sean Foley’s production is an apt celebration of the playwright’s 50-year Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Cheekily bottom-like, their downy skin blushing enticingly, these must be the sexiest apricots ever painted. If you held out your hand, you might just be able to touch them, there in the foreground of what is thought to be Caravaggio’s earliest surviving painting. Echoing the skin tones of a boy absorbed in the act of peeling fruit, the light highlights his hands and his downcast eyes make us voyeurs in a scene of unexpected sensuality. As setting the scene goes, it’s an excellent choice, and its somewhat tentative attribution is fitting for an exhibition dominated by the work not of Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Shakespeare has always been a fertile source of inspiration for story ballets. Plays which exist in multiple dance versions include Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet, while Shakespeare sources have often moved choreographers to their best work: Ashton's Dream, MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, and Christopher Wheeldon's recent Winter's Tale for the Royal Ballet are all highlights of their respective creators' oeuvres. Birmingham Royal Ballet has done the obvious thing in this anniversary year by mounting several of these story ballets, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Divorce opened on Sarah Jessica Parker inspecting the work of time in the mirror. Goodbye Carrie, hello Frances, upstate New Yorker, mother of two and wife to a man who demands equal time in the bathroom. “I was forced to take a shit in this coffee can in the garage,” hollered Robert through the door before barging in to reveal an abysmal moustache.In Divorce, ubiquitous relationship analyst Sharon Horgan continues her long uninterrupted series of home runs. Like Pulling and Motherland and even Catastrophe, it announces its zone of interest in a one-word title. The difference is that this Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Dont Look Back is the Ur-rockumentary, the template for hundreds of hand-held rock tour films, a source of inspiration as well as a model to aspire to.When director DA Pennebaker went on the road with Bob Dylan as he played a number of English gigs in 1965, he was intending to make a concert film. The backstage, limo and hotel room material was imagined as filler. But something unexpected happened: Dylan and his entourage, not least his constant companion road manager Bob Neuwirth, realised very soon that the performance didn’t end as the protest singer stepped out of the spotlight, high on Read more ...