Reviews
Jasper Rees
The Disappearance, shown in France a year ago, was adapted from a Spanish drama. Both shows had a more gender-specific title: Desaparecida or Disparue. A less abstract translation into English might have been The Missing, but that title had already been taken by a recent BBC drama with which The Disappearance shared a dogged fidelity to a template (see also Broadchurch, plus a lot of Nordic noir): one fresh suspect per episode, enough false leads to set up a red herring factory, and then a big reveal to finish [spoiler alert: the denouement is discussed below].The titular absentee was Léa Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Punk rock, or what’s touted as punk rock, is practically inescapable right now. In London, a series of events tagged as Punk.London: 40 Years of Subversive Culture includes concerts by reanimated bands, exhibitions and film seasons. Backers include the British Fashion Council, the British Film Institute and the Design Museum. The Mayor of London is an official supporter. Sponsorship has come from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The year 1976 was apparently when punk began, and it’s time for these august bodies to celebrate the anniversary.Joe Corré, the son of Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mozart operas on period instruments – it’s hardly a new idea, but it’s still the exception rather than the rule. The 18th–century sound has a lot to offer in Don Giovanni, as Ian Page and his Classical Opera Company demonstrated this evening. Clear string tone and vibrant woodwind colours were the order of the day. There was plenty of drama too, with Page expertly pacing the narrative and drawing an impressive and often robust tone from his modest forces. He also assembled a fine cast, no superstars here but rather a well-balanced and well-integrated ensemble. The result was a compelling Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It was an exhumation waiting to happen. As the UK ponders trashing Europe, Eurotrash was summoned from the grave to remind voters what they’ll be missing if enough Brits put an X in the exit box. The Europe of Eurotrash is not grey suits and fisheries legislation. It’s a place where a ruling on the straightness of cucumbers is a gag waiting to happen, where pooches and porn stars stand for political office, where the then future Madame Sarkozy could be distinctly heard to ask, “Do you like my titties?”.It’s not easy or appropriate to write about Eurotrash the day after the referendum Read more ...
David Kettle
It should have been a complete disaster. Not announcing your festival’s programme until barely a week before it started ought to have guaranteed that nobody knew about it – no press, no audiences, other plans made, other things booked.But still they came. It’s testament to the Cottier Chamber Project’s now firmly established place in Scotland’s summer musical life – this is its sixth year – that even keeping audiences in the dark as to what was planned didn’t deter them.That bizarre delay was down to questions over two major funders, artistic director Andy Saunders has explained. And it can’t Read more ...
graham.rickson
Ilya Beshevli: Wanderer (Village Green)Siberian musician Ilya Beshevli's background will resonate with anyone who's resented learning an instrument. The son of a composer and a musicologist, Beshevli grew to dislike his enforced piano lessons, envious of his non-musical peers who were allowed to play outside while he practised. He returned to the instrument by chance in his early twenties. In his words, “I feel like I'm lacking basic knowledge... nevertheless, I'm studying music at university at the moment and we'll see what this will bring...” This is a hard album to pigeonhole: best to Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"I can add colours to the chameleon," Richard III remarks of himself early in his anguished, marauding ascent to the throne, and the description could equally apply to the electrifying actor, Ralph Fiennes, who is London's latest hedgehog/dog/toad/bottled spider (pick your animal imagery of choice).Marking his third London stage appearance in 16 months, Fiennes may be older than most modern-day Richards but he cuts more deeply as well, his Almeida return coupling flashes of the charm this actor brought last year to Man and Superman with liberal dollops of the gathering psychosis in which Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Here comes the Switch House. The 10-story new build attached to the Gilbert Scott Bankside power station that was the first instalment of Tate Modern in 2000 opened to the public this weekend. Tate Modern’s expansion became almost a necessity as the original estimate of two million annual visitors became five million. Designed by the Basel-based duo of Herzog and de Meuron, also responsible for the original Tate Modern, it is an astonishing building which is intended, much more overtly than its mother gallery, to change the ways in which the public approaches and understands contemporary art Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The earliest known versions of Rapunzel and Cinderella appeared in an Italian compendium of fairytales known as the Pentamerone. They were collated by Neapolitan courtier Giambattista Basile and published in the 1630s after his death. The 50-strong anthology also includes versions of Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty and Hansel and Gretel. None of these familiar stories has made it into Tale of Tales, Matteo Garrone’s cinematic sampler of Basile’s collection. Instead he has plumped for three lesser-known fables, each of them illustrating the moral folly of ruling potentates.No doubt for Read more ...
Helen Wallace
Crazy-faced space-hopper, playmobil fireman, marble run: toys from my own childhood, staring at me now from out of glass cases, alongside an 18th century marionette, thread-bare rocking horses and a headless Georgian doll. This concert in the Museum of Childhood could have been a wallow in nostalgia. Instead, with their usual brand of ingenuity, the Multi-Story Orchestra kindled musical artefacts into vibrant life.It began with the trembling bow of Sally Pendlebury’s cello, open fifths sounding almost painfully vulnerable in the museum’s wide hangar. American composer Caroline Shaw’s In Manus Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
An old subversive Soviet joke has Karl Marx coming back from hell, facing enormous crowds of very unhappy people and telling them, "Oh I'm so sorry – it was only an idea." But what an idea and ideas, as Bettany Hughes's film reminded us. She took us on a very brisk canter through Marx’s life (1818-1883) and times, first visiting Trier where he was born into a bourgeois Jewish family, although his rather radical father had converted to Lutheranism to make his professional life easier under the Prussians. Evidently the young Marx was dashing, dapper and privileged – with a portrait to Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Polymath playwright Philip Ridley is endlessly inventive. Having written a couple of exciting pieces of bravura storytelling – Tender Napalm (2012) and Dark Vanilla Jungle (2014) – he went on to pen a political comedy – Radiant Vermin (recently revived at the Soho Theatre) – about the housing shortage, with three actors directly addressing the audience, and now he’s back with yet another kind of play: this time it’s a truly epic fantasy in a found space. So prepare to leave the comfort of the West End and travel deep into north London to experience the weird and wonderful world of Karagula. Read more ...