fri 29/03/2024

mythology

Ruination, Linbury Theatre review - Medea gets a makeover

At a time when every other theatre is offering an alternative Christmas show, what to make of the Royal Opera House’s first collaboration with Lost Dog, aka director-choreographer Ben Duke, who has come up with the most un-merry topic imaginable?...

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Thor: Love and Thunder review - more like it from Marvel

Twenty-eight films and 19 proliferating TV series in, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was becoming wearisome, testing fans’ faith with grimly effortful new entries, and choking other sorts of film into the margins, like knotweed. But like the mid-20th...

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Album: Hercules & Love Affair - In Amber

A gothic aesthetic is very common in the left field of electronic/club music these days – but it tends to go with fairly extreme sounds: either industrial pummelling, or glitched-out “deconstructed club” as in artists like Ziúr.But Andy Butler...

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Girl on an Altar, Kiln Theatre review - machismo, murder and motherhood in mesmerising myth

Playwrights return to classical myths for two main reasons – to shine a light on how we live today and because they're bloody good yarns.Marina Carr's re-telling of Clytemnestra's story is boldly innovative in its conception and execution, but...

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Jerusalem, Apollo Theatre review - Mark Rylance blazes in this astonishing revival

At long last, the giant has come back. Over a decade after its critical apotheosis on both sides of the Atlantic, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem returns to London in an astonishing revival starring Mark Rylance as the high priest of its proceedings....

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The Tale of King Crab review - an unholy fool's phantasmagoric progress

“Crazy? Aristocrat? Sad? Killer? Drunk?” A modern Tuscan hunting lodge’s regulars remember the myth of irascible rebel Luciano many ways, as it endures from the previous century’s misty turn. Italian-American co-directors Matteo Zoppi and Allessio...

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The Book of Dust, Bridge Theatre review – as much intelligence and provocation as fleet-footed fun

It’s been seventeen years since Nicholas Hytner first directed Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials at the National Theatre, ambitiously whirling audiences into Pullman’s universe of daemons, damnable clerics and parallel worlds. Now he has...

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Metamorphoses, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - punchy, cleverly reworked classic

Ovid was exiled – or to put it in twenty-first century terms, "no-platformed" – by an indignant Emperor Augustus for the scandal caused by his three-book elegy on love, Ars Amatoria. Most scholars believe the intrigue behind his banishment to be...

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Paradise, National Theatre review - war, woe, and a glimmer of hope

Philoctetes, Odysseus, Neoptolemus: the men’s names in Sophocles’ Philoctetes are all unnecessarily long and weighed down by expectations. Poet Kae Tempest’s lyrical new adaptation for the National Theatre focuses on the chorus, spinning out the...

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Changing Destiny, Young Vic review – an epic literary discovery

The Young Vic, led by the inspiring figure of Kwame Kwei-Armah, is back. After a prolonged closure, during which this venue has passionately continued to work with young directors, the local community (including both delivering food and creative...

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Die Walküre, Longborough Festival Opera review - heroic defiance of farcical constraints

Whatever might be said about Longborough Festival’s first live opera since 2019, the first and most important thing is to praise the company without reservation for putting on a show of anything like this quality in the face of obstacles of the sort...

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Der Rosenkavalier, Bavarian State Opera online review - myth-making magic

Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time stalk this haunting dream of a Rosenkavalier. The love games of teenager Octavian and his experienced mistress the Marschallin are sexy and plausible; the comedy of ridiculous Baron Ochs keeps a low profile, but stays...

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