Arts
Washed-up junkies, Trump the director and a cash giveaway: Edinburgh Festival round-up
Trump Lear is a chaotically enjoyable one-man show with a complicated premise. David Carl, an American satirist, has arrived on…
Robert Redford turns his hand to radio
Much ado is being made of the latest listening figures, which have suggested that the percentage of those aged between…
A visionary and playful heir to Duchamp: Yves Klein at Blenheim Palace
Nothing was so interesting to Yves Klein as the void. In 1960 he leapt into it for a photograph —…
Thank god for the return of the generation gap in pop
In June, a 20-year-old man called Jahseh Onfroy was murdered after leaving a motorcycle dealership in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Onfroy…
Magnificent: Vanessa at Glyndebourne reviewed
‘Outside this house the world has changed. Life is swifter than before; there is no time for idle gestures.’ Anatol,…
For any politician spoiling for a fight over Ireland’s border, Under the Tree is required viewing
Every so often there’s a news story in which neighbours quarrel over rampaging leylandii. The police are summoned, the case…
Lang Lang in an improbable situation
An internationally admired orchestra in a beautiful hall: that’s the Melbourne Symphony in Hamer Hall of the Victorian Arts Centre.…
The artist who breathes Technicolour life into historic photographs
There is something of The Wizard of Oz about Marina Amaral’s photographs. She whisks us from black-and-white Kansas to shimmering…
Currentzis’s Beethoven asked us to listen with our bodies rather than our minds
Some conductors conduct from the fingers — think of Gergiev’s convulsive gestures, flickering up and down the keyboard of an…
Comedy is entirely unsuited to the ‘Edinburgh hour’
Edinburgh. Why do comics do it? We invariably lose money. Even if you don’t pay for your venue, the cost…
Did Ed Balls mean to make a documentary on the joys of Trump’s America?
The thing I most regret having failed ever to ask brave, haunted, wise Sean O’Callaghan when I last saw him…
Modernist architecture only worked for the wealthy
It was Le Corbusier who famously wrote that ‘A house is a machine for living in’ (‘Une maison est une…
If we offer Ian McKellan a peerage, will he promise not to inflict his King Lear on us again?
Gandalf, also known as Ian McKellen, has awarded himself another lap of honour by bringing King Lear back to London.…
Radio 4 brings back the dead
If proof were needed that radio will survive the onslaught of the new (or rather now not-so-new) digital technologies, albeit…
It will save some marriages – or end others: The Escape reviewed
Dominic Savage had an early start. In Barry Lyndon (1975), Stanley Kubrick’s sprawling take on Thackeray, he played a prepubescent…
Wayne Blair
Such a lovely title, it’s hard to believe that The Long Forgotten Dream hasn’t been used before. The title belongs…
Why the National Garden Scheme beats the Chelsea Flower Show hands down
What could be more British than nosying around someone else’s private property while munching on a slice of cake? The…
Fascinating, powerful and brilliantly done: Apostasy reviewed
For many years I would chat genially with our local Jehovah, Stephen, who came door-to-door every few months or so,…
Why the scream of the elephant is much more chilling than the roar of a lion
Raw, earthy, ear-piercing. It’s hard to decide which was more terrifying and unsettling: the roar of the elephants in Living…
Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t funny – especially when he’s mocking the powerless
Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest series Who Is America? isn’t funny. But then, nor was his terrible 2016 movie The Brothers…
Nolde was giddily optimistic about the Nazis – they rewarded him by confiscating his works
The complexities of Schleswig-Holstein run deep. Here’s Emil Nolde, an artist born south of the German-Danish border and steeped in…
One of Alan Bennett’s finest efforts: Allelujah! reviewed
Alan Bennett’s new play, Allelujah!, is an NHS drama set in a friendly hospital in rural Yorkshire. Colin, an ambitious…
A proper old-fashioned stinker: ITV’s The Bletchley Circle – San Francisco reviewed
After just one episode, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco (ITV, Wednesday) seems certain to stand out from the crowd. In…
Thrilling energy & humour from Longborough Festival Opera: Ariadne auf Naxos reviewed
‘They’ve dined well, they’ve drunk their fill, their brains are dull and slow. They’ll sit snoozing in the dark until…
John Russell
Once he was known as ‘Australia’s lost impressionist’ and referred to as John Peter Russell. Now at the Art Gallery…
