London
An Evening with Joan Armatrading, Cadogan Hall review - thoughtful and engaging conversationTuesday, 08 April 2025
I can’t hear Joan Armatrading without being instantly transported back to Liverpool, and my student digs just around the corner from Penny Lane. I was a first-year music student, writing essays in the late-night glow of an Anglepoise, my radio-... Read more... |
Kenny Garrett, Ronnie Scott's review - a mixed bagMonday, 07 April 2025
The sax-player Kenny Garrett established a reputation as one of Miles Davis’s band in the Amandla (1989) period. He was also a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the launching-pad for scores of talented young musicians.Influenced by the... Read more... |
Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind computer generated doppelgängersFriday, 04 April 2025
The best way to experience Ed Atkins’ exhibition at Tate Britain is to start at the end by watching Nurses Come and Go, But None For Me, a film he has just completed. It lasts nearly two hours but is worth the investment since it reveals what the... Read more... |
The Importance of Being Oscar, Jermyn Street Theatre review - Wilde, still burning brightThursday, 03 April 2025
It’s a greater accolade than a Nobel Prize for Literature – one’s very own adjective. There’s a select few: Shakespearean; Dickensian and Pinteresque. Add to that list, Wildean. That’s all the more remarkable in the light of Oscar Wilde’s... Read more... |
Apex Predator, Hampstead Theatre review - poor writing turns horror into sillinessWednesday, 02 April 2025
Motherhood is a high stress job. Ask any woman and they will tell you the same: sleepless nights, feeding problems and worry. Lots of worry. Lots and lots. Writer John Donnelly, who has also experienced the stresses of parenthood, devotes his new... Read more... |
Playhouse Creatures, Orange Tree Theatre review - jokes, shiny costumes and quarrels, but little dramaThursday, 27 March 2025
Creatives – or creatures? In the 1660s, women – having been banned from working as actors in previously more puritanical decades – finally arrived on the stage in London theatres. Although they were sometimes scorned as “playhouse... Read more... |
Lizz Wright, Barbican review - sweet inspirationThursday, 20 March 2025
Lizz Wright’s exquisite singing breaks all boundaries between soul, gospel and jazz. In so doing she channels many interwoven strands of the African-American experience. Wright thrives on singing to an audience: her recorded output is wonderful... Read more... |
Black Bag review - lies, spies and unpleasant surprisesFriday, 14 March 2025
Michael Fassbender recently starred in Paramount+’s rather laborious spy drama The Agency, but here he finds himself at the centre of a much more sly and streamlined operation. Written by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones etc) and directed... Read more... |
The Habits, Hampstead Theatre review - who knows what adventures await?Thursday, 13 March 2025
“The exercise of fantasy is to imagine other ways of life,” says one of the role-players during a Dungeons & Dragons marathon, because “without understanding how others might live, I ask you, how will we ever understand ourselves?” It’s a good... Read more... |
Twiggy review - portrait of a supermodel who branched outSaturday, 08 March 2025
When Twiggy burst on to the scene in 1966, she was a beacon of hope for all flat-chested, short-haired, skinny girls. Of course we couldn’t look as fabulous as she did, with her enormous eyes and high forehead and long legs, but we could try.Before... Read more... |
Alterations, National Theatre review - high emotional costs of ambitionSunday, 02 March 2025
Plays about the Windrush Generation are no longer a rarity, but it’s still unusual for revivals of black British classics to get the full resources of the National Theatre. Guyana-born playwright Michael Abbensetts, who died in 2016, is often... Read more... |
Jessica Duchen: Myra Hess - National Treasure review - well-told life of a pioneering musicianTuesday, 25 February 2025
Myra Hess was one of the most important figures in British cultural life in the mid-20th century: the pre-eminent pianist of her generation and accorded “national treasure” status as a result of the wartime lunchtime concert series at London’s... Read more... |
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