tue 08/04/2025

London

Jules and Jim, Jermyn Street Theatre review - a bohemian love triangle ends badly

It’s apt that this new play, with characters moving in and out of Paris either side of World War I, is staged at this intimate theatre, one that always has the ambience of a below-ground oubliette. These bohemians are not penniless and cold as were...

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Album: Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good!

“If you’re going to do it, do it well” goes a chanted refrain in the opening title track here. And it’s words Jessie Ware clearly lives by – she is not someone who has time to do anything rubbish. From featuring on the cream of post-dubstep...

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Grenfell by Steve McQueen, Serpentine Gallery review - a stirring memorial for the tower block inferno

The fire which engulfed Grenfell Tower in London’s North Kensington on 14 June, 2017, with a death toll of 72, is still under investigation. The dead were largely recent immigrants to the UK. The tragedy, it’s clear now, was caused by an unholy...

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Blu-ray: Full Circle

Julia (Mia Farrow) stands jolting and shuddering, a butterfly pattern of blood on her blouse, shocking the ambulancemen on her doorstep. Her nine-year-old daughter Kate, who choked on an apple like Snow White before Julia cut her throat in a...

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Gagarin Quartets, Modulus String Quartet, Brunel Museum review - a multimedia journey into space

London concert life is infinitely varied, especially if you dig below the surface. So after spending Tuesday evening in the lofty Royal Albert Hall, on Wednesday I was 16 metres below ground, in the tunnel shaft of the Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe...

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National Youth Choir, Royal Albert Hall review – a spectacular jubilee

The recently re-branded National Youth Choir was founded in 1983 as a single choir of about 100 voices, and in those 40 years has grown to be a family of four, ranging from the nine-year-olds at the bottom of the boys’ and girls’ choirs to the 25-...

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Betty Blue Eyes, Union Theatre review - musical revival pigs out on nostalgia

People can’t find the food they want in the shops. Nobody has enough money. Public services are under pressure. And there’s a big Royal occasion to take our minds off things.England 2023? Nah, England 1947, as rationing applies to meat and fruit...

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Facade Ensemble, Collins Rice, St Margaret Pattens Church review - meditation and reflection

The Facade Ensemble is an interesting chamber group of young players dedicated to exploring 20th repertoire, in this case John Cage, Arvo Pärt and Gavin Bryars, who celebrates his 80th birthday this year. The programme, put together by founder and...

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Diana Evans: A House for Alice review - lyrical sequel to Ordinary People

Diana Evans specialises in houses, their baleful quirks and the meaning of home. In her acclaimed third novel, Ordinary People (2018), formerly happy, black couple Melissa and Michael live in a crooked, malevolent Victorian terraced house in south...

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For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy, Apollo Theatre review - a turbo-charged, game-changing piece of theatre

For a show that comes with a trigger warning about the themes of racism, gang violence, toxic relationships, sexual abuse, child abuse, domestic violence and suicide it will tackle, For Black Boys… is unexpectedly joyful.Its thorny subjects are...

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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Complicité, Barbican review - murder in the forest

Complicité, the adventurous theatre company led today by Simon McBurney, one of its founders, is now 40. Over the last four decades, McBurney and his collaborators have changed the face of theatre.Rooted in the training of Jacques Lecoq, along with...

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Berlusconi, Southwark Playhouse Elephant review - curious new musical satire

One wonders if Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan pondered long over their debut musical’s title. Silvio might invite hubristic comparisons with Evita (another unlikely political leader), but Berlusconi feels a little Hamilton – too soon?...

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