Reviews
edward.seckerson
Sir Simon Rattle’s Sibelian journey has been long and fruitful and has taken him all the way from Birmingham to Berlin, and more particularly the revered Philharmonic where the spaces between the notes now resonate in extraordinary ways and the bass lines are sunk deeper than with any other orchestra on the planet. Beginning their London residency with the first two of Sibelius’s symphonies (the rest to follow over the next few days) gave us a chance to feel how organically Sibelius became Sibelius and how the music effectively seemed to come up through the bass lines. The wonder of the Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Oh, Dr Pozzi! This gorgeous man is garbed in a red wool, full-length robe, almost completely obscuring his elegantly gleaming white shirt. The shirt collar frames his face, casting light, and its frilled cuffs emphasise his improbably long-fingered hands in a lively gesture. The most fashionable gynaecologist in Paris, a pioneering doctor, around whom rumours swirled of decadence and legendary love-making – Sarah Bernhardt was rumoured to be a long-time mistress – he is the subject of a masterly full-length portrait by the precocious, formidably talented John Singer Sargent (1856-1925 Read more ...
David Nice
Is there an art-form more tied to bad as well as good tradition than classical ballet? Yolanda Sonnabend’s unatmospherically if expensively kitsch designs for this Swan Lake wouldn’t have lasted more than a season or two in the worlds of theatre and opera, yet here they still are in Anthony Dowell’s soon-to-be-retired homage to Petipa and Ivanov, first seen in 1987 and due to take Swan Lake at Covent Garden past the 1000th performance in the present run. Longer term, ballet hack Drigo’s mutilations and interpolations of 1895 would have made Tchaikovsky turn in his then-recently dug grave, and Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Your initial impressions of Hilla Medalia’s Dancing in Jaffa may be influenced by whether you go into it knowing anything about its central character, Pierre Dulaine. His is a name that needs no introduction to anyone familiar with the world of ballroom dancing: he has been a world star in that field for decades, who together with his dancing partner, Yvonne Marceau, set up the American Ballroom Theatre in New York in 1984.New Yorkers will certainly know Dulaine too, through his establishment of Dancing Classrooms in 1994, a programme that took ballroom dancing into schools, to 11-year-olds, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is there such a thing as New Writing Pure? By this I mean plays that not only have a really contemporary sense of character, plot and dialogue, but are also written in a distinctly individual language whose texture is singular and personal. Call it fine writing, call it literary, it doesn’t matter. The point is that this kind of theatre is about plays that are not only beautiful to look at, but beautiful to hear as well. After all, words are an essential part of the overall theatre experience.Ever since her early plays, such as By Many Wounds (1999) and Further Than the Furthest Thing (2000 Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A New York blizzard so intense that people can't get out the front door traps a random couple who have hooked up online into a rather longer mating dance than they had anticipated. That's the essence of Two Night Stand, the debut film from director Max Nichols (son of the late, great Mike, who died in November) that prolongs a wearyingly cute premise well past breaking-point.That one sticks with the goings-on at all pays credit to the cast of what is essentially a two-hander: the large-eyed Analeigh Tipton and the ever-remarkable Miles Teller, the Whiplash star here cast as a horndog Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The BBC is keen to point out to anyone who'll listen that this new political satire is not, repeat not, about Julian Assange. They'll allow that it was in part inspired by the WikiLeaks founder's situation, but any similarity between him and Dan Hern, a preening egotist who leaked official documents and sought asylum in a South American embassy in central London, is purely coincidental.That's the legalities out of the way, so what of the programme? Co-created by Kayvan Novak (of Fonejacker fame) and producer Tom Thostrup, and written by newcomers Peter Bowden and Thom Phipps, Asylum (a three- Read more ...
Matthew Wright
“Jazzerbaijan”, the giddy publicity tag attached to last night’s double bill of Azeri jazz at Ronnie Scott’s, was sounding soberly appropriate by the end of a dazzling display of generic shape-shifting by the young Isfar Sarabski Trio. A packed and exuberant audience thrilled to his sound, which seemed to transcend generic boundaries with a breath-taking lyricism and fluency. The first set, an accomplished, if perhaps more familiar sound from the Amina Figarova Sextet, had a more consistent Western focus, though Azeri music still featured in Figarova’s playing and compositions.Jazz in Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Casting existing partners is no guarantee of artistic success – for every Burton/Taylor, there is a Bennifer. Hannah Price has taken a risk, too, by pairing the revered Dame Harriet Walter with her comparatively unfamiliar American husband, Guy Paul, in Clara Brennan’s exposing two-hander. But it’s a risk worth taking, as the couple’s deep-rooted rapport lends a frisson to this stroll down memory lane.It’s 30 years since their first meeting, and troubled transatlantic lovers Louis (Paul) and Boa (Walter) are interrogating their shared history to uncover truths. The couple (pictured below) Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Cynical writer Macaulay Connor (Jimmy Stewart) and pragmatic photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) are the tabloid team charged with getting the undercover scoop on the society wedding of the year, between old-moneyed Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) and a self-made industrialist. Their way into the party: Tracy’s ex-husband, CK Dexter Haven (Cary Grant). Will Tracy actually marry a social-climbing stiff, or fall for the angry young reporter with an unnatural capacity for champagne? Will Dexter be able to turn the tables on Spy magazine’s diabolical editor? And why can’t we all dress like Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Finally the moment the Breaking Bad diaspora has been waiting for, with the arrival of Vince Gilligan's new show about the earlier career of New Mexico's least scrupulous lawyer, Saul Goodman. Mind you, the title is a little bit misleading, because Saul doesn't exist yet. In this incarnation, he's still just a hustling low-life called Jimmy McGill, a man who never knowingly leaves any barrel unscraped.Goodman was often used as light relief in Breaking Bad, providing interludes of comic sleaze amid the remorseless descent into moral darkness, but here we must, perforce, get a fuller sense of Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Andris Nelsons is flavour of the month in London. He is in town to conduct The Flying Dutchman at Covent Garden, but between performances he is moonlighting at the Festival Hall, giving two concerts with the Philharmonia. This, the first, opened with a serviceable Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 from Paul Lewis, and concluded with a Bruckner Third Symphony that was in a different league entirely.The orchestra was reduced for the Mozart, though still large for the repertoire. Nelsons and Lewis have a curious working relationship, the conductor pushing for more expression and phrase shaping than Read more ...