Arts
Player Kings proves that Shakespeare can be funny
Play-goers, beware. Director Robert Icke is back in town, and that means a turgid four-hour revival of a heavyweight classic…
How flabby our ideas of draughtsmanship have become
The term drawing is a broad umbrella, so in an exhibition of 120 works it helps to outline some distinctions.…
Baffling and vile: ETO’s Manon Lescaut reviewed
In 1937, John Barbirolli took six pieces by Henry Purcell and arranged them for an orchestra of strings, horns and…
Should beautiful actors be allowed to play those with plain faces?
Sometimes I Think About Dying is one of those titles you want to shout back at – what? Only sometimes?…
Danny Dyer’s new C4 programme is deeply odd
Who do you think said the following on TV this week: ‘I love being around gay men – seeing a…
Why garage punk is plainly the apogee of human achievement
How is it that a group that sounds like the Hives are selling out the Apollo? In a world configured…
We have lost an unforgettable teacher and one of the greatest living critics
Tanner, the critic RICHARD BRATBY Michael Tanner (1935-2024), who died earlier this month, had such a vital mind and stood…
Somersaulting beauty of the songmaker
It’s uncanny sometimes how it works. There we were last Saturday in Hamer Hall to hear what Stephen Layton from…
Better than expected (but my expectations were low): Back to Black reviewed
When the trailer for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic of Amy Winehouse, Back to Black, first landed, her fans were gracious. ‘This,’…
I’m ashamed that I used to think ABBA wasn’t cool
One of the joys of listening to archive BBC interviews with pop stars is the chance to hear long-discarded hipster…
Grey, gloomy, and utterly joyless: Ripley reviewed
If you’ve spent any time gawping at Netflix over the past half-decade or so, you’ll already know that human culture…
What would Tanner say?
On the train home from the Royal Festival Hall I learned of the death of Michael Tanner, who wrote this…
The mayhem ‘Born Slippy’ provoked felt both poignant and cathartic: Underworld, at Usher Hall, reviewed
On the same night Underworld played the second of two shows at the Usher Hall, next door at the Traverse…
In defence of noise music
It’s curious to consider what a venerable old thing noise music is. That this most singularly untameable of musics –…
The tumultuous story behind Caravaggio’s last painting
For centuries no one knew who it was by or even what it was of. The picture that had hung…
Why has the National engaged in this tedious act of defamation of the Brontës?
The Divine Mrs S is a backstage satire set in the year 1800, when flouncy costumes and elaborate English prose…
A lithe brilliance
It figures that Australians should write great plays about sport because we are exceptionally – some people would say excessively…
Exhilarating: MJ the Musical reviewed
If you’ve heard good reports about MJ the Musical, believe them all and multiply everything by a hundred. As a…
Impressionism is 150 years old – this is the anniversary show to see
The time that elapsed between the fall of the Paris Commune and the opening of the first proper impressionist exhibition…
Never admit that your band is prog – it’s the kiss of death
Sensible prog-rock bands try to ensure no one ever realises they play prog. What happens when you are deemed a…
Compelling and somewhat heartbreaking: Girls State, on Apple TV+, reviewed
Here’s a fun thought experiment: instead of entrusting the future of American democracy to one of two old men, what…
The quiet brilliance of street photographer Saul Leiter
This is the second exhibition of mid-century New York street photography at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. The first,…
You’ll want to claw your face off: Scoop reviewed
Scoop is a dramatised account of the events leading up to the BBC’s 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. The…
Choreographers! Enough with the reworkings of Carmen and Frankenstein!
Carmen and Frankenstein are without a doubt two of the most over-worked tropes in our culture, the myths of the…
