Wales
Blaze of Glory!, Welsh National Opera review - sparkling entertainment up the valleysMonday, 13 March 2023
Like certain other opera companies, WNO has leant in recent years towards popular shows of one kind or another. In their case this is not mere pandering to the Valleys coach parties, but a genuine attempt to assert an identity through an exploration... Read more... |
Trouble in Butetown, Donmar Warehouse review - entertaining and warmheartedWednesday, 22 February 2023
With the fast-approaching anniversary of the latest war in Europe, our culture’s continued fascination with World War Two gets a contemporary boost from Trouble in Butetown at the Donmar Warehouse.Written by Diana Nneka Atuona, this follow-up to... Read more... |
Album: John Cale - MercyWednesday, 18 January 2023
John Cale has always walked a cutting-edge. At 80, he is still making music that stretches the mind. He is accompanied on his most recent album by a number of talented and original ground-breakers from both sides of the pond – from the eccentric and... Read more... |
Album: CVC - Get RealThursday, 05 January 2023
CVC stands for Church Village Collective, a six-piece who hail from the countryside near Cardiff. They were the best live act I saw last year (of a long list which includes Melt Yourself Down, Paul McCartney, The Prodigy and Wet Leg). It was a... Read more... |
The Silent Twins review - the tragic story of the Welsh teens who were sent to BroadmoorFriday, 09 December 2022
The fascinating story of the silent twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons, who were incarcerated in Broadmoor for 12 years for minor crimes, has been told before, several times. There’s a 1986 BBC film by Jon Amiel based on Marjorie Wallace’s book about... Read more... |
Other Voices Cardigan review - a celebration of music on the cuspTuesday, 08 November 2022
Other Voices is, according to its founder Philip King, a festival which celebrates what’s about to happen. Indeed, artists like Hozier, Fontaines DC and Amy Winehouse cut their teeth at this unique musical event which, although it has its home in... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Owl ServiceTuesday, 08 November 2022
The Owl Service is instantly unsettling, Bridget Appleby’s credit sequence cutting between flickering candles and shadow puppets while a plaintive Welsh folksong is drowned out by the sound of a motorcycle. Alan Garner’s uncompromising 1967 fantasy... Read more... |
The Feast review - slow-cooking folk-horrorSaturday, 20 August 2022
Lee Haven Jones’ Welsh-language folk-horror debut dissects a family’s treachery to the land in eventually apocalyptic fashion. It starts in silent, jagged style, the characters seeming as artificial as their minimalist house, abstract paintings and... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Kiri Pritchard-McLean / Lou Sanders / SnortThursday, 11 August 2022
Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Monkey Barrel ★★★★Wearing a heavily sequinned leotard - she thought this was how we’d all dress after “living in trackies during lockdown” - Kiri Pritchard-McLean wants to address some very serious subjects, such as... Read more... |
Album: Gwenno - TresorThursday, 30 June 2022
“The historic, the prehistoric, the natural, architectural, geological, ornithological, or on the side of its folklore, Christian or heathen – the place teems with subject matter that is as curious as it is interesting.” So the Gothic Revival... Read more... |
Violet, Music Theatre Wales/Britten-Pears Arts review - well sung and played, but to what end?Friday, 24 June 2022
Best new opera in years, they said – don’t ask who – after the Aldeburgh Festival premiere of Tom Coult’s Violet. I’d have been happy in Hackney had it been as good as, say, Philip Venables’ 4.48 Psychosis or Stuart MacRae’s The Devil Inside. Alas,... Read more... |
First Person: composer Gavin Higgins on his new cantata 'The Faerie Bride'Friday, 17 June 2022
I was a strange child, I didn’t really fit in. I would twitch and distort my face into awkward shapes. I obsessively bit my fingers and knuckles till they bled. I collected leaflets and piled them high in neat stacks in the corner of my room. I was... Read more... |
