Reviews
Marianka Swain
If the London property boom continues post-election, the fight for living space may well develop into all-out war. But what begins as skirmish in Peter Souter’s 2013 play, promoted from the Hampstead’s downstairs space, soon turns to romance as two twenty-somethings with competing claims to a flat discover the benefits of estate agent incompetency. It’s a fairy tale for our times.Alas, as the title suggests, domestic harmony is on a very short let. The first half of Souter’s comedy/drama skews towards the former, acting as effective pilot for an Odd Couple reboot: abrasive City worker Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Testament to the work of Richard Alston Dance Company (RADC) over the 20 years since its foundation was not just the première-filled celebratory programme performed at Sadler's Wells last night, but the enthusiastic audience there to see it. Alston's own choreography never excites me particularly, but there's no denying his company has done sterling work for the British contemporary dance scene over the years, both through its association with the Place and London Contemporary Dance School, and through its extensive regional touring schedule.The first London première of the night, Rejoice in Read more ...
Heather Neill
The mother, so often a sentimental figure in art, can be as tenacious and bold as any animal when protecting her young. Mark Hayhurst's play about Irmgard Litten, mother of Hans, a lawyer who cross-examined Hitler – and won – in 1931, celebrates the single-minded determination of a woman daring to take on Nazi might in the cause of her son. Hans was imprisoned in Sonnenburg "for his own protection" on the night of the Reichstag fire in 1933 and, after spending years in concentration camps, was found hanged in Dachau in 1938.Taken at Midnight, with Penelope Wilton as Irmgard, Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Ghostpoet – aka Obaro Ejimiwe – released his first album Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam in 2010. He has since been named as The Guardian’s New Band of the Day, nominated for a Mercury Prize and toured the festival circuit with the likes of Metronomy. His third album Shedding Skin, due to be released on March 2nd, was the focus of Pias Nites at Shoreditch’s Village Underground.Featuring tracks like "Off Peak Dreams" (below) there's a roughness and edge to the sound, despite the soft-rock riffs and almost jazzy pockets, that goes well with his towny observations of mugs of tea and bacon Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Following the critical and commercial hits Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, Disney's latest is a film which will win you over with its charming WALL-E-esque antics, oddball coupling and simple slapstick before it – somewhat annoyingly – reveals itself as a kids' first comic book movie, entering the superhero movie stratosphere by transforming into an origin story for the titular crime-fighting team.Based on a little known Marvel comic series and directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, Big Hero 6 is set in the fictional mash-up city San Fransokyo – a pleasing blend of ornate Eastern- Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Dating in the internet age is rife with complications, and yet Dave Simpson’s amiable romcom manages to eschew nearly all of them. Bar its online matchmaking set-up, this is a chaste, big-hearted time capsule of a play, with nary a glance at Facebook or Twitter, let alone the ephemeral intimacies of Tinder and Snapchat. Simpson’s old-fashioned piece is a perfect partner to his resolutely gauche paramours, but over its almost two-hour running time offers curiously nebulous commentary on contemporary romance.Following in the fine tradition of digital deceit, lifelong singletons Angela and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Mercifully not preceded by a Broadchurch-style hype-tsunami, the new series of Mr Selfridge has slipped neatly back into the Sunday 9pm slot as if it's the rightful owner just back from a year of travelling round the world. It's not revolutionary, ground-breaking or "subversive", but equipped with some new characters and promising plotlines, this opening episode ushered us into the post-World War One era with a spring in its step and the wind in its hair.However, first we had to dispatch poor Rose Selfridge, Harry's much-loved wife (who was played by Frances O'Connor, latterly of The Missing Read more ...
Guy Oddy
While Julian Cope’s albums are usually fairly expansive affairs which employ a vast array of instruments, an audience with the Arch Drude is a more intimate affair these days. There’s no backing band and the man takes to the stage armed only with a 12-string acoustic guitar, a microphone and a few effects pedals. There’s also a big bass drum set up on stage with “You can’t beat your brain for entertainment” written on the skin – but that’s just a prop and doesn’t get played.Cope started up by launching into “I’m Living in the Room They Found Saddam In” from 2005’s Citizen Cain’d album, and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Norway’s celebrated jazz colossus Jan Garbarek hadn’t played the north Norwegian city of Bodø for 15 years. Moreover, he and his group took the stage of the spanking new Stormen concert house as the openers of Bodø Jazz Open, the city’s four-day festival of all that is and isn’t strictly jazz. If there was any pressure, it didn’t show. Resolutely composed during his hour and three-quarters on stage, Garbarek also said nothing. Given his stature, the waves of power intermittently surfacing in the music and the nature of the event, there was only one possible outcome – a standing ovation. And Read more ...
Florence Hallett
What does it mean to be a great artist? Is it enough for your work to be admired, studied, emulated and quoted by contemporaries and subsequent generations, or is the value of art judged by a more complex set of criteria? By considering the extent of Rubens’ influence on artists from Rembrandt to Klimt, the Royal Academy is having a go at skinning a very old and troublesome cat: the elevation of Rubens from gifted confectioner to worthy Old Master.In examining why Rubens should be given a place at art’s top table his work is explored thematically and compared with paintings, prints and Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
More than once in André Singer’s documentary Holocaust: Night Will Fall – marking in advance the 70th anniversary, on 27th January, of the liberation of Auschwitz, having added that explanatory first word to the title with which the film was released in cinemas last year – his interviewees describe their experience as like “looking into hell”. We hear phrases like “world of nightmare”, “utter shock”, “beyond describing” repeatedly, uttered by the first Allied soldiers to enter the German concentration camps at the end of World War Two.We, the general viewer, have had seven decades to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Tyrannosaurus Rex: My People Were Fair and had Sky in Their Hair, Prophets, Seers & Sages: Angels of the Ages, Unicorn“I was just reflecting and talking about things most people thought or wanted to hear about at the time.” Marc Bolan’s comment about why Tyrannosaurus Rex became popular so quickly is heard in a brief BBC interview included as one of the extras on this new edition of My People Were Fair and had Sky in Their Hair, the summer 1968 debut album.Bolan himself, as the liner notes to the related reissue of Prophets, Seers & Sages: Angels of the Ages state, was astutely Read more ...