London
Karen Krizanovich
Oblique and gentle, Lilting is a tender, tough drama about Junn, a Cambodian-Chinese widow played by the legendary Pei-Pei Chang (HK’s martial arts icon known as “Queen of Swords” and recognizable to western audiences from Crouching Tiger...) and her dead son’s lover, Richard (Ben Whishaw), as Junn tries to sort out the untold nature of the men’s relationship.The opener of the London LGBT Film Festival, Lilting is as sensitive as one would expect, but raucous and ragged when it shows how one gets to the touchy truth. Not only is Junn alone, she is also quite without English (though she can Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The advantage of basing drama on real events, particularly emotive ones like the 2005 London bombings, is that they have inbuilt resonance; the disadvantage, all too apparent in 2013 play Warde Street, is that it can be challenging to articulate a revelatory view. Familiarity with the arguments and sentiments expressed in this 80-minute piece vastly lessens its impact, and a burst of late tension (chiefly earned via the shortcut of a firearm) is further diminished by dubious use of reverse chronology. It’s a short play with grand ambition, sadly unfulfilled.Writer Damien Tracey focuses not on Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
So we're off for another blast of between-the-wars ultraviolence with the Shelby gang from Birmingham, once again soundtracked by incongruous electric blues music. Time has moved on from the immediate aftermath of Great War hostilities and now we're into the Twenties, which are roaring as if they're in agony. The baleful Tommy Shelby (a curiously shaved and bleached-looking Cillian Murphy) is aiming to undertake "business expansion" by extending the Peaky Blinders' racketeering tentacles down to London.However, not everyone thinks this is a great idea. Younger brother John points out that the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Trailing a string of Grammys and multi-platinum albums, and now a successful actress and purveyor of her own "My Life" perfume for good measure, you wouldn't think R&B legend Blige had much left to prove. However, she evidently sees it differently, and she ripped through this compressed and streamlined Roundhouse set as if lives were at stake.The show was handily timed to help stoke up anticipation for her forthcoming album The London Sessions, due in November and featuring contributions from Disclosure, Emeli Sandé, Sam Smith and more. This is evidently a talismanic project designed to Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The news cycle waits for no man. When Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky’s thinly veiled Boris Johnson satire premiered in Edinburgh at the beginning of August, it seemed remarkably timely, coinciding as it did with BoJo announcing his intention to return to Parliament. Now, it’s at best reactive, and competing with a sea of far more penetrating editorials about the likelihood and reality of everyone’s favourite accident-prone chap actually running the country. Kingmaker is still atop its soapbox, but frantically and fatally jockeying for position.Khan and Salinsky’s central argument, conveyed in a Read more ...
Heidi Goldsmith
The next revolution of civil disobedience is unlikely to be a ticketed event, with a sedentary congregation of grey-haired, nostalgic former hippies. And the Royal Festival Hall (even at full capacity) is a mere campfire compared to Joan Baez's public of 30,000 protesters of Washington DC in 1967. But politics, where the drum stick is eschewed for the brush, were still the unspoken substance of her first London performance of four.“The tour before this was in Latin America,” she began in between songs while slowly changing guitars, “…and it was an honour to play in all those countries I was Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Dramatic national events such as riots tend to attract verbatim theatre practitioners like smashed shop windows attract looters. In this new play, Alecky Blythe – who specialises in recording ordinary people and editing their words into a humane story – takes to the streets to see what people were saying during the English riots of summer 2011. The main problem at the outset is that citizens armed with new digital media have already filmed and recorded memorable scenes from these events. So does Blythe have anything to add to what we already know?A kind of recognisable British Read more ...
Jo Verrent
The audience comment I most want to hear during next week's Unlimited Festival is: this show has transformed my perception of disability. We got that over and over and over during the first Unlimited Festival, which ran as part of the Cultural Olympiad in 2012. And I want that again. It’s all about making people understand that disability isn’t a negative, awful experience, just a facet of life that can give you as much as it apparently appears to take away. In fact, it just gives you more.I’m senior producer for the Unlimited commissions programme, which has worked with nine disabled Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The extraordinary beams of light shooting miles into the air from Victoria Tower Gardens may be the most viewed piece of conceptual art ever. Spectra, visible from high points miles away like Primrose Hill, is the extraordinary work of Paris-based artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda, and is produced by art facilitators Artangel. For 20 years or so, Artangel have been doing – what? Struggling to describe what they do in a few words the best I can say is that they are “purveyors of magic.” They create unusual, often poetic experiences that lift us from the mundane, from Rachel Whiteread’s Read more ...
Andy Plaice
My heart sank when Lorraine Pascale’s documentary on fostering began with her making cakes with Junior, a 10-year-old boy in care. I feared Bake Off meets Who Do You Think You Are?, but those worries quickly faded as Pascale told her extraordinary story.We know her as a television chef and best-selling cookery author, but her success is all the more remarkable when her circumstances are revealed. Born in Hackney, she was given up at birth and spent the first 18 months of her life with a foster family. Little was known about this period. One hazy photo remained. Possibly the foster mum was Read more ...
Naima Khan
If you've been rolling your eyes at the rash of articles hailing London's ever-increasing number of dry bars, allow writer-director Ché Walker to convince you of their amatory relevance. In his new musical drama, smooth-talker Klook and hard nut Vinette fall for one another over a long tall glass of carrot juice, with just the right kick of ginger. The Park Theatre's 90-seat studio space here gives us two sexy strangers who meet randomly in the grimy health club where Klook works, only to find that the two are craving a metaphorical detox. Walker, drawn once more into the American noir Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Sprawling over the East End of London for the next thirteen days and boasting an illuminating line-up of new voices, retrospectives and debate in its 13th year, the East End Film Festival ensures no cinematic rock is left unturned with its bold programming choices.Monte Hellman’s controversial Cockfighter gets a rare outing at Red Gallery, a grand Masonic Temple is home to a weekend of macabre cinema and the opening night gala proves the festival’s dedication to championing filmmakers they believe in with the world premiere of Ross Clarke’s first feature, New Orleans-set drama, Dermaphoria. Read more ...