London
The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2, Park Theatre review - if Chekhov did soap operasSaturday, 26 October 2024
The misadventures and misbehaviours of the English upper-middle class is catnip for TV executives. All those posh types on which us hoi polloi can sit in delicious self-righteous judgement, as we marvel at their cut glass accents, well-tailored... Read more... |
Album: Underworld - Strawberry HotelFriday, 25 October 2024
Purveyors of extraordinary energy and euphoria, Underworld never miss a beat. The new album – 30 years on from their debut, and their exposure in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting – once again features music that will always be better live, in the... Read more... |
Autumn, Park Theatre review - on stage as in politics, Brexit drama promises much, but loses its wayMonday, 21 October 2024
Theatre is a strange dish. A recipe can be stacked with delicious ingredients, cooked to exacting standards, taste-test beautifully at the halfway mark, yet leave you not quite full, not exactly satisfied, disappointed that it didn’t come out quite... Read more... |
Land of the Free, Southwark Playhouse review - John Wilkes Booth portrayed in play that resonates across 160 yearsFriday, 18 October 2024
Straddling the USA Presidential elections, Simple8’s run of Land of the Free could not be better timed, teaching us an old lesson that wants continual learning – the more things change, the more they stay the same.We open on the Booth family kids... Read more... |
Knife on the Table, Cockpit Theatre review - gangsters grim, not glamorousThursday, 17 October 2024
There’s a moment in writer/co-director, Jonathan Brown’s, gritty new play, Knife on the Table, that justifies its run almost on its own. Flint, a decent kid going astray, is "invited" to prove he’s ready for the next step in his drug-dealing career... Read more... |
Album: Mystery Tiime - Maudlin Tales of Grief and LoveWednesday, 16 October 2024
Londoner Ayman Rostom has been around the block and then some. For some 25 years he’s been a hip hop producer as Dr Zygote, for the past decade he’s made wiry and weird house music as The Maghreban – both of these aliases are still, it seems, fully... Read more... |
Disclaimer, Apple TV+ review - a misfiring revenge saga from Alfonso CuarónTuesday, 15 October 2024
It seems to be silly season for big-name directors. First, Coppola’s Megalopolis and Steve McQueen’s Blitz: why? Now Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer: double why?What happens in the minds of directors whose careers have matured and whose audiences have... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - the Vatican, the Blitz, a trip to Poland and a surfin' nightmareSaturday, 12 October 2024
ConclaveDirector Edward Berger won an Oscar for his last feature, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), but here he concerns himself with the more intimate and claustrophobic battlefield of the Vatican. The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died, and under... Read more... |
The Lehman Trilogy, Gillian Lynne Theatre review - three brothers, two crashes, one American DreamFriday, 11 October 2024
Merchant bankers then eh? It’s not a slang term of abuse for nothing, as the middlemen collecting the crumbs off the cake (in Sherman McCoy’’s analogy from The Bonfire of the Vanities) have a reputation for living high on the hog off the ideas and... Read more... |
Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation, Whitechapel Gallery review - breaking boundariesThursday, 10 October 2024
Brazilian artist Lygia Clark is best known for taking her abstract sculptures off the pedestal and inviting people to interact with them. Dozens of constructions named Bichos (Beasts or Critters) (pictured below right) are hinged... Read more... |
French Toast, Riverside Studios review - Racine-inspired satire finds its laughs once up-and-runningWednesday, 09 October 2024
It’s always fun jabbing at the permanently open wound that is Anglo-French relations, now with added snap post-Brexit, its fading, but still frothing, humourless defenders clogging up Twitter and radio phone-ins even today. So it’s probably timely... Read more... |
Joan, ITV1 review - the roller-coaster career of a 1980s jewel thiefSaturday, 05 October 2024
If you’re looking for an advertisement for how crime doesn’t pay, Joan will do very nicely. Written by Anna Symon, this six-part series is based on the memoirs of real-life jewel thief Joan Hannington, whose light-fingered accomplishments earned her... Read more... |
