Barbican
Wendy & Peter Pan, Barbican Theatre review - mixed bag of panto and comic play, turned up to 11Friday, 31 October 2025
On paper, this RSC revival of Ella Hickson’s 2013 adaptation sounds just the ticket: a feminist spin on the familiar JM Barrie story, with a gorgeous set, lots of wire work and all graced with the orotund tones of Toby Stephens as Captain Hook. In... Read more... |
Kilsby, Parkes, Sinfonia of London, Wilson, Barbican review - string things zing and sing in expert handsThursday, 23 October 2025
It was guaranteed: string masterpieces by Vaughan Williams, Britten and Elgar would be played and conducted at the very highest level by John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London.Would a rarity by Arthur Bliss and a slow movement from a Delius string... Read more... |
Shibe, LSO, Adès, Barbican review - gaudy and glorious new music alongside serene SibeliusMonday, 20 October 2025
Many orchestral concerts leaven two or three established classics with something new or unusual. The LSO reversed that formula at the Barbican last night, with three pieces written since 2000 offset by just one familiar item, Sibelius’s Third... Read more... |
Gesualdo Passione, Les Arts Florissants, Amala Dior Company, Barbican review - inspired collaboration excavates the music's humanitySaturday, 18 October 2025
This powerful, austere collaboration between Les Arts Florissants and the Amala Dianor Company – presented as part of Dance Umbrella – excavated all the violence, grief and transcendence of the events surrounding Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion.... Read more... |
Trio Da Kali, Milton Court review - Mali masters make the ancient newWednesday, 08 October 2025
Trio Da Kali are griots, and their traditional role in West Africa is to connect: to evoke the glories of the past and to bring communities together through mediation and spiritual admonition. Their role, even though sung in Bambara, without... Read more... |
Rohtko, Barbican review - postmodern meditation on fake and authentic art is less than the sum of its partsSaturday, 04 October 2025
It’s truly thrilling to see the Barbican embracing big concept long-form theatre again, seeking out productions that are as conceptually challenging as they are visually exhilarating. Last week, audiences were asked to understand the forces of... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: composer Donghoon Shin on his new concerto for pianist Seong-Jin ChoSaturday, 27 September 2025
Donghoon Shin has a taste for the esoteric – a love of labyrinths, literary puzzles, and contradictory aspects of the self. One of his favourite authors is the Argentinian essayist and short-story writer, Jorge Luis Borges, whose perspective... Read more... |
Lacrima, Barbican review - riveting, lucid examination of the forces of globalisation through a dressFriday, 26 September 2025
So often the focus – in the coverage of a royal wedding – is the story of the woman wearing the bridal dress. While every fashion choice she makes will be scrutinised for the rest of her life, it is, nonetheless, she herself who will be mercilessly... Read more... |
Jansen, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - profound and bracing emotional workoutsMonday, 22 September 2025
Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra last seared us in Britten’s amazing Violin Concerto, with Vilde Frang as soloist, on the very eve of lockdown in 2020. The work’s dying fall then was echoed by the spectral drift ending Vaughan... Read more... |
Cho, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - finely-focused stormy weatherSaturday, 20 September 2025
It was a hefty evening, as it needn't necessarily have been throughout, since Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony can conceal more darkness between the lines in a lighter take. In his second full concert of his second season as the wildly successful and... Read more... |
Ganavya, Barbican review - low-key spiritualityMonday, 08 September 2025
At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before suggesting they sing along, she plunges straight in, a minute or so into chanting “a love supreme”, and... Read more... |
Good Night, Oscar, Barbican review - sad story of a Hollywood great's meltdown, with a dazzling turn by Sean HayesFriday, 08 August 2025
Back in the day, when America’s late-night chat show hosts and their guests sat happily smoking as they shot the breeze for a growing audience, the most sought after guest was Oscar Levant. No longer a household name except to fans of vintage... Read more... |
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