1950s
The Lonely Londoners, Kiln Theatre review - Windrush Generation arrive in a London full of opportunities, but not for themFriday, 24 January 2025
As something of an immigrant to the capital myself in the long hot summer of 1984, I gobbled up Absolute Beginners, Colin MacInnes’s novel of an outsider embracing the temptations and dangers of London.Written a couple of years earlier and set a... Read more... |
Liepe, National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, Cottis, NCH, Dublin review - a spirited shot at ShostakovichMonday, 06 January 2025
There’s nothing like an anodyne new(ish) work to give a masterpiece an even higher profile. Rachel Portman‘s Tipping Points, promising to address climate change issues, was so bland and featureless it could have been composed by AI. Any one bar of... Read more... |
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Tate Modern review - an exhaustive and exhausting showMonday, 02 December 2024
Last month a portrait of Alan Turing by AI robot AI-Da sold at Sotheby’s for $1.08 million – proof that, in some people’s eyes, artificial intelligence can produce paintings worth as much as those made by human hands.Depending on your view of AI,... Read more... |
The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera review - Jamesian ambiguities chillingly preservedSaturday, 12 October 2024
At first, you wonder if the peculiar voice of Henry James’s maybe unreliable narrator can be preserved in this production. Surely the outcome is known if we first meet the Governess in an insane asylum bed? Yet whether she was mad or maddened during... Read more... |
A Face in the Crowd, Young Vic review - lame rehash of a 1950s film satireMonday, 30 September 2024
It’s hard to work out why Kwame-Kwei Armah chose to end his tenure at the Young Vic by directing this soggy musical by Elvis Costello (songs/lyrics) and the American playwright Sarah Ruhl (book). Was it because of it seemed to be a warning... Read more... |
Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - declaration of thrills to comeFriday, 27 September 2024
If audience reaction is anything to go by, Kahchun Wong’s season-opening first concert officially in post as principal conductor of the Hallé was an outstanding success.And the reception was deserved. Still young enough, with a mop of hair cascading... Read more... |
Here in America, Orange Tree Theatre review - Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller lock horns in McCarthyite AmericaWednesday, 25 September 2024
The clue is in the title – not Then in America or Over There in America or even a more apposite, if more misleading, Now in America, but an urgent, pin you to the wall and stick a finger in your face, Here in America.Pre-Trump 2.0, David Edgar’s new... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Floating CloudsTuesday, 10 September 2024
Once regarded as highly as Kurosawa and Ozu, Japanese director Mikio Naruse’s star has fallen in recent decades, with few of his films readily available in the West. I’d suggest reading Hayley Scanlon’s concise introduction to Naruse’s work on the... Read more... |
The Birthday Party, Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath review - Pinter still packs a punchSaturday, 17 August 2024
Before a word is spoken, a pause held, we hear the seagulls squawking outside, see the (let’s say brown) walls that remind you of the H-Block protests of the 1980s, witness the pitifully small portions for breakfast. If you were in any doubt that we... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Merry-Go-Round (Körhinta)Wednesday, 10 July 2024
There’s a lot to unpick in Zoltán Fabri’s 1956 film Merry-Go-Round (Körhinta). Take leading man Imre Soós’s disarming resemblance to a young Peter O’Toole, and a central love story which plays out like a Hungarian take on Romeo and Juliet with some... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Margo Guryan - Words and MusicSunday, 16 June 2024
Late summer 1966. Jazz was Margo Guryan’s thing. She was not interested in pop music. This changed when she was played The Beach Boys’s “God Only Knows.” Amazed by what she heard, she tuned in to pop radio for the first time. Her head was further... Read more... |
Accolade, Theatre Royal Windsor review - orgy-loving knight makes for topical pre-election dramaThursday, 06 June 2024
Times change, people don't. Does a knighthood sit well on a man who shags anonymous strangers in the Blue Lion out of hours? Emlyn Williams played his own fruity lead when his play Accolade premiered in 1950 - Bill Trenting, a hugely successful... Read more... |
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