1940s
World on Fire, Series 2, BBC One - return of Peter Bowker's panoramic view of World War TwoTuesday, 18 July 2023
Writer Peter Bowker apparently had plans to make six series of World on Fire, but the arrival of Covid after 2019’s first series threw a spanner in the works. Anyway, here’s the second one at last, and it’s a little strange to find that this... Read more... |
Osborne, BBC Philharmonic, Glassberg, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - energy and virtuosityMonday, 19 June 2023
The BBC Philharmonic ended its 2022-23 season in Manchester with a programme that might have been chosen as a showpiece for virtuosity.There was orchestral virtuosity in the form of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, pianistic virtuosity in the shape... Read more... |
A different angle on the Anne Frank story in 'A Small Light'Wednesday, 03 May 2023
The Diary of Anne Frank became a Broadway play and has formed the basis of a lengthy catalogue of films and TV series, but the name of Miep Gies is rather less well-known. Yet without Gies the Anne Frank story might never have reached the wider... Read more... |
The Good Person of Szechwan, Lyric Hammersmith review - wild ride in hyperreality slides byMonday, 24 April 2023
As the UK undergoes yet another political convulsion, this time concerning the threshold for ministers being shitty to fellow workers, it is apt that Bertolt Brecht’s parable about the challenges of being good in a dysfunctional society hits London... Read more... |
Betty Blue Eyes, Union Theatre review - musical revival pigs out on nostalgiaFriday, 07 April 2023
People can’t find the food they want in the shops. Nobody has enough money. Public services are under pressure. And there’s a big Royal occasion to take our minds off things.England 2023? Nah, England 1947, as rationing applies to meat and fruit... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Queen of SpadesTuesday, 14 February 2023
If post-war baroque cinema had been a school or movement rather than a style, its male icon would have been Anton Walbrook. Before Max Ophüls cast the suavely menacing Austrian actor as the master of ceremonies in La Ronde (1950) and as King Ludwig... Read more... |
The Last Stage review - a former prisoner returns to the death campFriday, 27 January 2023
Seventy-eight years ago, on January 27,1945, Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army. The iconic images of the ovens with charred skulls and emaciated survivors peering through barbed wire were filmed by Russian cameramen over the... Read more... |
Allegiance, Charing Cross Theatre review - George Takei's childhood story makes a heartfelt musicalFriday, 20 January 2023
Like families, nations have secrets: dirty linen that they prefer not to expose to the light of day. Patriotic myths need to be protected, heroic narratives shaped, good guy reputations upheld. In 1942, the USA rounded up Japanese-Americans and... Read more... |
A Streetcar Named Desire, Almeida Theatre review - Patsy Ferran rises above fussy stagingFriday, 13 January 2023
It’s a long way from the dank chill of an English winter to the stultifying heat of a New Orleans summer, but we’ve been here before at this venue. Five years on from their award-winning Summer And Smoke, Rebecca Frecknall is back in the director’s... Read more... |
Watch on the Rhine, Donmar Warehouse review - Lillian Hellman's 1940 play is still asking awkward questionsWednesday, 11 January 2023
We’re reminded, in a grainy black and white video framing device, that, as late as the summer of 1941, the USA saw World War II as just another European war. As brilliantly illustrated in Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America, not only was such... Read more... |
Adam Sweeting's Top 10 Films of 2022Thursday, 22 December 2022
1. Nightmare AlleyIt’s the late 1930s, and the America depicted here is still lost in the purgatory of the Great Depression. Director Guillermo del Toro has described it as “a straight, really dark story”, but it grips like a sinister,... Read more... |
It’s a Wonderful Life, English National Opera review - Capra’s sharp-edged sentiment smothered in endless schmaltzSaturday, 26 November 2022
Looking for a sparkly operatic musical, well sung and played, slick and saturated in a range of mainstream styles that stop short in the year the movie masterpiece It’s a Wonderful Life was released, 1946? Then Jake Heggie’s 2016 confection may be... Read more... |
