America
Adam Sweeting
In this aptly-titled series (BBC One), four British 20-somethings visit the USA to investigate the inner workings of the beauty industry. Perhaps not surprisingly, they discover that it’s a hotbed of greed and exploitation.Their first stop was the Beautycon exhibition in Los Angeles, a must-see gathering of 30,000 “beauty fans” and (ghastly neologism alert) online “influencers”. The latter included the glittering Kenneth Senegal, who can earn $14,000 by mentioning a cosmetic product in one of his videos. Chloe (a Belfast-based beauty blogger) and Casey (a fastidiously made-up gay man from Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It’s not so much that Pretty Woman: The Musical isn’t much good, which it isn’t. More to the point is that this West End replica of the recent Broadway musical of the 1990 film feels utterly superfluous: a gloss on a popular romcom that doesn’t improve upon or deepen our appreciation of the original in any way. Indeed, at the press preview attended, one could feel the audience all but marking time until the iconic Roy Orbison song of the title gets trotted out in order to bring an expectant crowd to their feet. Nothing else in the preceding two and a half hours comes close to Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Watching Dark Waters, the latest film from director Todd Haynes (Carol, Far from Heaven), I kept thinking — what’s the opposite of a love letter? The film is based on the work of Rob Bilott, a real-life lawyer who uncovered a corruption scandal so toxic that it was literally poisoning us. Dark Waters stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, and it functions as a dignified takedown of DuPont: the chemical giant responsible for the poison.This is a legal procedural that reads like a horror story. It’s Frankenstein-ish in its terrors. It opens with Bilott — partner at a corporate law firm — lured to his Read more ...
Liz Thomson
“Fire and Rain”. Who doesn’t recall James Taylor’s first number one 50 years ago! Born in Carolina and a “graduate” of the 1960s Greenwich Village music scene, Sweet Baby James has given the world some enduring songs and been part of some of music’s greatest scenes. American Standard is his 19th album, his first in five years, and it’s a refreshing dip into the Great American Songbook – “songs I grew up with that I remember really well, that were part of the family record collection”. As indeed they were for many of us.This is classy comfort food which will appeal to those familiar with both Read more ...
Hassan Abdulrazzak
You are at a party having a good time when someone gives you a glass of champagne. You take one and then another and soon the party is over. You get in the car to go home and are driving along when you see a police car in the rearview mirror: how annoying! Now you are regretting that indulgent second glass but what’s done is done. The cop gives you a breathalyzer test and you are exactly at the legal limit. The cop says you have to be below that limit, and you are arrested, charged, imprisoned and deported.This is just one of the stories in my new play, The Special Relationship, based on Read more ...
Matt Wolf
This latest musical theatre exercise in “geek chic” has been an American phenomenon: a show propelled by social media that developed a rabid fan base taking it all the way to Broadway last year. And here Be More Chill now is in London at The Other Palace, previously home to Heathers – another American musical about the psychological torture inherent in being a teen – and arriving in time to suggest Dear Evan Hansen on amphetamines, but with much familiar pushing of buttons where an honest appeal to the heart might be.Not that the adoring public for this lunatic sci-fi paean to normalcy will Read more ...
joe.muggs
Grimes is hilarious. For all the grandiose conceptualism, apocalyptic visions, high tech sonic manipulation, outré costumes, modish witchery, multiple personas, arch media baiting with her billionaire boyfriend and all the rest, she is still essentially a dork. When she emerged from the weird end of the 00s online electronic music landscape where semi-serious lo-fi genres like “witch house” and “seapunk” abounded, she always seemed kind of goofy with it. And though her musical progression has been a steady accumulation of expensive-sounding production, that same drama student on acid Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Lesley Manville’s thrilling career ascent continues apace with The Visit, which marks American playwright Tony Kushner’s return to the National Theatre following the acclaimed Angels in America revival nearly three years ago. But Manville’s whiplash-smart assuredness in a role that calls for a star and gets one proves one of the few invigorating aspects of a long and spirit-depleting evening. Told across three acts (the second one only 40 minutes) with two intervals, the play fills the National’s largest stage with a huge cast, almost all of whom – Manville Read more ...
Nick Hasted
An early trailer for this adaptation of the ‘90s games franchise caused Cats-like horror at its overly humanoid Hedgehog. Rather than the former film’s risky freak-show, though, this diligently redesigned Sonic is the most safely saccharine family movie imaginable.Given the basic premise of a fast blue anthropomorphic critter, a Road Runner-style animated chase movie would seem the obvious choice (one made by 1993’s Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon series). Instead, after a cynical origin story splicing Spider-Man and Bambi, in which Sonic’s slain mother-figure explains that great Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It looks as if vandals have ransacked Whistler's Peacock Room. The famous interior was commissioned in the 1870s by shipping magnate, Frederick Richard Leyland to show off his collection of fine porcelain. The specially designed shelves have been broken and their contents smashed; shards of pottery lie strewn across the floor.The destruction seems also to be coming from within, though; it’s as if some form of vile corruption were infecting the very substance of the exotic room. Over the mantelpiece hangs a painting of a princess by James McNeill Whistler; circles of mould have infected Read more ...
mark.kidel
There is something deliciously normal about Tennis, the Denver husband and wife team of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley. Steeped in the best pop of a bygone age, the couple’s lyrics seem so simple and yet unpack hidden depths on repeated listening. Moore and Riley met as analytical philosophy majors - with a shared love of great and often little-known music - and they bring to their crystalline songs of love a sophistication that never gets too clever.This is their fifth album, and they never let up. As time goes by, Tennis seem to refine their art, leaving most traces of indie rock behind. Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The role of Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood was made for Tom Hanks – and he excels in it. Rogers’ sixth cousin, Hanks has at his fingertips the compassion and warmth that made the zipper-cardigan-clad American children’s educational TV host a phenomenon. Slow-talking and deeply reassuring, he was a kinder, gentler version of the 1920s–‘30s actor and homespun-wisdom dispensing “cowboy philosopher” Will Rogers (no relation).Watching Hanks here should propel non-Americans to YouTube to find televised interviews with Rogers and excerpts from his late-afternoon half-hour Read more ...