1920s
Blu-ray: Three AgesTuesday, 12 September 2023
The Saphead gave Buster Keaton his first starring role in a full-length comedy, but 1923’s Three Ages is the first feature film which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in. Two-reelers were a form where he could go, in his words, “wild and... Read more... |
Wozzeck, Royal Opera review - orchestral and visual beauty salve human misery at its most extremeMonday, 22 May 2023
If you’re going to be locked in an auditorium with a crazed soldier for over 90 minutes, you need to be overwhelmed by the human frailty and baseness in Büchner’s still-shocking stage play of the late 1830s, the spiderweb beauty of Berg’s 1925 score... Read more... |
The Vortex, Chichester Festival Theatre review - naturalism clogs up Coward's pipesSaturday, 06 May 2023
Sometimes I go outside and look at our kitchen drain. Where there should be a vortex there’s a largely static pool. Tree roots have recently grown through the old pipes, their clumps colonised with fat, dog hair and coleslaw bits, and though a bit... Read more... |
Isaac Julien: What Freedom is to Me, Tate Britain review - a journey from making documentaries to making artThursday, 04 May 2023
Isaac Julien was a student at St Martin’s School of Art when the Brixton riots broke out. Black youths took to the streets, frustrated by high rates of unemployment, police harassment, far-right intimidation and media hostility, and all hell was let... Read more... |
The Dead City, English National Opera review - strong dream world, weak love storyMonday, 27 March 2023
Is Korngold a second-rank composer with some first-rate ideas? Most performances of the 23-year-old Viennese prodigy's Die tote Stadt make it seem so. Nearly smothered in glitter and craft, the story can compel – an oblique, promising stance on... Read more... |
Turandot, Royal Opera review - spectacle and sound wow in this significant revivalTuesday, 21 March 2023
Nearly 40 years old, Andrei Serban’s Royal Opera Turandot feels like a gilded relic (I felt like a relic myself on learning that my writer neighbour wasn’t born when I saw Gwyneth Jones as the ice princess in 1984). Yet so too, outwardly, did... Read more... |
Sylvia, Old Vic review - great leads, rambling storyFriday, 17 February 2023
For many years, I would ask groups of students to vote in elections because “it’s important to honour those who gave up so much to ensure that the likes of us can”. Some would nod, others would shrug, a few might have inwardly scoffed – too... Read more... |
Hewitt, BBC Philharmonic, Davis, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - the classical styleMonday, 13 February 2023
Two intriguing themes and two great guest artists were offered by the BBC Philharmonic to their Saturday night audience in the Bridgewater Hall: the themes were what “classicism” really is, and the variety of music inspired by (or written for) dance... Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, Opera North review - magic of a classic stagingMonday, 06 February 2023
It’s good to think that there are some opera productions – not just compositions – that in themselves can have the status of classics. David Pountney’s 1980 interpretation of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen must be high on a list of contenders... Read more... |
Babylon review - sound and fury in silent HollywoodSunday, 22 January 2023
Babylon is sensational, a manic, pounding assault on the senses meant to convey Hollywood’s chaotic birth. Damien Chazelle’s return to La La Land’s showbiz dreams forsakes ineffable intimacy for hysterical thunder, and for much of the time that’s... Read more... |
Blues for an Alabama Sky, National Theatre review - superb cast and production for this period hitSaturday, 22 October 2022
The cynical might think Pearl Cleage’s play had been expressly written to address the over-riding issues in today’s USA – abortion and contraception rights, gun control, homophobia, racism. But the cynical would be wrong, as Blues for an Alabama Sky... Read more... |
The Banshees of Inisherin review - stellar turns from Brendan Gleason and Colin FarrellFriday, 21 October 2022
Previous works by screenwriter-director Martin McDonagh, which include In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, might give you an inkling of the perverse and tantalising mindset that lies behind The Banshees of Inisherin… but then... Read more... |
