England
DVD/Blu-ray: LivingMonday, 20 March 2023
Mr Williams (a wonderfully restrained, Oscar-nominated Bill Nighy) is taking time off work from his job in the Public Works department at County Hall in London. It’s the early Fifties and office life is very proper, with bowler hats and a strict... Read more... |
Allelujah review - Alan Bennett put through the blenderMonday, 20 March 2023
I'm proffering just a tad less than three cheers for Allelujah, the film version of Alan Bennett's 2018 Bridge Theatre play that is also that rare screen adaptation of Bennett not to be shepherded to celluloid by his longtime friend and collaborator... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Final ProgrammeTuesday, 14 March 2023
Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius is a multiversal dandy, androgynous harlequin, English assassin and sometimes Cockney, an sf adventure hero who grew through four novels into a walker in the elegiac post-Sixties wastelands. He’s an apocalyptic... Read more... |
The Great British Bake Off Musical, Noel Coward Theatre review - blue-chip cast lift daft confectionWednesday, 08 March 2023
If you are hoping for some harmless fun at The Great British Bake Off Musical, probably with a few dodgy jokes about soggy bottoms mixed in, you won’t be disappointed. But what you might not expect is that the show will liberally ladle on the... Read more... |
Sleepova, Bush Theatre review - sweet coming of age play with a soft centreMonday, 06 March 2023
Can a play ever be a bit too much like real life? The thought came to me while watching Matilda Feyisayo Ibini’s entertaining new play Sleepova at the Bush. This latest opening is almost a bookend to the excellent Red Pitch, premiered at the same... Read more... |
Duet for One, Orange Tree Theatre review - poignant two-hander gets an updated repriseMonday, 20 February 2023
This 1981 two-hander was opened out for a film in 1986, starring Julie Andrews no less, with all its offstage characters given screen life. Thankfully it has been shrunk back to its original dimensions, with added modern ornamentation for this... Read more... |
2:22 A Ghost Story, Lyric Theatre review - Cheryl makes an impressive stage debutFriday, 03 February 2023
The set of 2:22 A Ghost Story is open to the auditorium when we arrive and locates us at once in gentrification-land. We are in a slick kitchen with white chevron tiling, new units and an obligatory island; big skylights loom overhead and outsize... Read more... |
Empire of Light review - cinema of broken dreamsSunday, 08 January 2023
Sam Mendes assembled most of the ingredients necessary to make Empire of Light a wrenching English melodrama with a potent social theme. The stars are Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Micheal Ward and Toby Jones. Mendes teamed with his usual... Read more... |
Patrick Duff: The Singer review - agony and ecstasy of a rock'n'roll lifeTuesday, 13 December 2022
As our favourite rock stars become elders, there has been a steady flow of autobiographies, some ghosted, some authentically authored; more or less confessional, revisiting the ups and downs of life-journeys lived beyond the fatal 27th birthday that... Read more... |
Matilda the Musical review - a dizzying, smartly subversive delightMonday, 28 November 2022
I bow to no one in my affection for Matilda the Musical onstage, which I've loved across multiple iterations, from Stratford-upon-Avon to the West End and Broadway, and numerous cast changes, too.But Matthew Warchus's screen iteration of his Roald... Read more... |
Blood, Sex & Royalty, Netflix review - yo, bros, get down with the GOAT, Henry VIIIWednesday, 23 November 2022
“It was like Woodstock on steroids,” opines an expert in Netflix’s new release about the doomed marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (yes, another one).Not sure you remember anything of that description from your history lessons? That would be the... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, RSC, Stratford review - family show eases back the terror and winds up the politicsSaturday, 19 November 2022
Life is full of coincidences and contradictions. As I was walking to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was on his feet in the House of Commons delivering yet another rebalancing of individual and collective resources. On... Read more... |
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