America
Liz Thomson
The queen of R&B is no stranger to struggle – the Staples Singers, led by Pops, played a key role in the 1960s civil rights movement, emerging from the gospel circuit as so many great black singers did. Mavis’ first paid gig was with her family in in 1948. Almost 70 years later, she’s often to be found on the road with Bob Dylan, who was sweet on her back in the early 1960s when they sang often from the same stage. Where once she marched with Martin Luther King, today she puts her energies into Black Lives Matter.The Civil Rights Act was passed into US law more than half a century ago yet Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Outrage knows no time barrier, as the world at large reminds us on a daily basis. So what better moment for the National Theatre to fashion for the internet age a stage adaptation of Network, the much-laureled 1976 celluloid satire about lunacy and, yes, anger in the televisual age. For a generation or more of filmgoers (myself among them), Peter Finch's Howard Beale ranting "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" was part of our cultural DNA, and the first thing to be said about Ivo van Hove's theatrical iteration of the film is that its star, Bryan Cranston, does that Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“There is something odd, I suppose, about anyone who betrays their country.” It’s an excellent opening line, particularly when delivered in director George Carey’s nicely querulous narrative voice, for Toffs, Queers and Traitors (BBC Four). He certainly knows what he’s talking about: Carey’s last two documentaries for Storyville have been about Kim Philby and George Blake, two other prominent entries in the roll-call of British Cold War intelligence infamy.But spies, like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, are surely odd in their own unique ways. They turn traitor for all sorts of reasons, even if Read more ...
graham.rickson
The Incredible Shrinking Man starts innocently with a young couple bantering on a small boat off the California coast. Before what looks like an atomic mushroom cloud wafts towards the unfortunate Scott Carey, lightly coating him in glittery fallout. Six months later, Carey seems to be getting smaller. Initially it’s little more than an irritation.Shirts and trousers don’t seem to fit any more, but a chirpy doctor refuses to believe his baffled patient. Soon, this unwanted diminution is undeniable, and medical tests – cue ominous shots of phials, test tubes and syringes – confirm that a Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Word wizard. Grammar bully. Sentence shark. AA Gill didn’t play fair by syntax: he pounced on it, surprising it into splendid shapes. And who cared when he wooed readers with anarchy and aplomb? Hardly uncontroversial, let alone inoffensive (he suggested Mary Beard should be kept away from TV cameras on account of her looks, and shot a baboon), he was consistently brilliant. Wherever he went, he brought his readers with him. His journalist’s eye and performer’s hunger made him a natural raconteur, one who could induce synaesthesia so you could taste words.People dear to me loved his writing Read more ...
aleks.sierz
American classics dominate the straight plays in London’s West End. Whenever a producer wants to revive a straight drama, they will inevitably look first at the back catalogue of Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller or, in this case, David Mamet. Then they stuff the production full of stars: in this case, superstar Christian Slater, plus Robert Glenister, Kris Marshall, Stanley Townsend and Don Warrington all shining in the firmament. Together they make this revival of Mamet’s 1983 classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, a masterclass in testosterone-fuelled acting.From its haunting title, to its Read more ...
Owen Richards
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is a wonderful ode to childhood summers and America’s forgotten class. The film follows foul-mouthed six-year-old Moonee, who spends her days playing with friends and terrorising fellow motel residents, and her equally abrasive but likeable mother Halley. It’s an unconventional life, but it’s the best they can do with their lot.The Florida Project is primarily a character study. At times it almost feels documentary in style, as scenes are lined up to show everyday encounters and relationships. There’s no overt mission or threat driving the story forward; we Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There are, as I’m sure many of you are aware, four key stages of political change. Denial, anger, acceptance and, finally, documentary film-making. Now that the Donald has been ensconced in the White House for over a year, Channel 4’s, Trump: An American Dream, has completed the change transition and is ready to take a look at his life in a series spanning five decades of US history.The first episode focused on Trump’s career in the family building business, which he took over from his father, Fred. Trump Sr, apparently, told his children at a young age, “You are killers, you are kings.” In Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Wonder Woman was the film that defied all the predictions: a big-budget superhero movie directed by a woman which managed to please not only the feminists and their daughters but also the boys who love DC and Marvel. In its slipstream comes Professor Marston and the Wonderwomen, written and directed by Angela Robinson, best known for her work in TV on The L Word. It's surrounded by some controversy as it claims to be a based on a true story but there's not a lot of corroborative testimony from the central characters to justify its narrative.It’s the tale of Harvard psychology professor Read more ...
Katherine Waters
The Imperial War Museum’s Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 brings together art made in response to the immediate events and long-term consequences of the events of 11 September. In the main the exhibition is more historical survey of conflict-related artistic output than engaged examination of how artists have responded to the resulting conflicts, and what coherence it achieves derives from the paint-by-colours effect of dividing it into four roughly chronological topics: 9/11, State Control, Weapons, and Home. These divisions also make it pretty uncomfortable viewing.Since the purpose of the Read more ...
Tim Cumming
After more than 35 years of subterranean bootleg life, Bob Dylan’s incendiary gospel shows and sessions from 1979 to 1981 are seeing the light of day as volume 13 of the Official Bootleg Series. Trouble No More comes as a regular two-CD and deluxe eight-CD/ one-DVD collection that exhaustively returns us to those three years of otherworldly fervour and rage against earthly corruption. And it starts, as it started for Dylan, with the hammer-wielding riff of “Slow Train”.“It was exciting because it was controversial,” says Little Feat guitarist Fred Tackett of those extraordinary three years. Read more ...
David Nice
Fancy that: the day after the last major Menotti staging I can remember in the UK, The Medium at the Edinburgh Festival, "splendid piece of post-Puccinian grand guignol" turned up in two different reviews (moral: don't discuss the performance with your colleagues). "Dated piece of post-Puccinian absurdist melodrama" might be a bit harsh but not so wide of the mark in the case of The Consul, his late 1940s fantasy rooted in the horrors of totalitarianism and western bureaucracy. Certainly the Guildhall School students, conductor and production team gave it the best possible chance, making it Read more ...