Arts
If only Caryl Churchill’s plays were as thrillingly macabre as her debut
The first play by the pioneering feminist Caryl Churchill has been revived at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Owners, originally staged…
No one should trust the camera in the age of AI
Bryan Appleyard on photographic manipulation, past and present
Astonishing mistress of song & dance
The Newsreader has already caught a lot of attention for the way in which it weaves together a strong sense…
Uninventive and far too polite: BRB’s Black Sabbath – The Ballet reviewed
Not being an aficionado of the heavy-metal genre, I snootily suspected that I would rather be standing in the rain…
Why intellectuals love Disney
This month marks the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney’s company. The first cartoons it was founded to produce – the…
Virgin on the astonishing: Madonna, at The O2, reviewed
When I was a kid listening obsessively to AC/DC and Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, I despaired of music writers.…
How Philip Guston became a hero to a new generation of figurative painters
Why do painters represent things? There was a time when the answers seemed obvious. Art glorified power, earthly and divine,…
Only goodwill will get you through this reboot: Paramount+’s Frasier reviewed
Remember the groans of dismay, possibly including your own, which greeted John Cleese’s announcement in February that he was reviving…
Juicy solution to the Purcell problem: Opera North’s Masque of Might reviewed
Another week, another attempt to solve the Purcell problem. There’s a problem? Well, yes, if you consider that a composer…
Scherzinger is superb but why’s the set so dark and ugly? Sunset Boulevard, at the Savoy Theatre, reviewed
Sunset Boulevard is a re-telling of the Oedipus story set in the cut-throat world of Hollywood. Pick a side in…
Epic, immersive and tiresomely long: Killers of the Flower Moon reviewed
Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a Western crime drama that runs to three-and-a-half hours. (Sit on that,…
How the Georgians invented nightlife
Dan Hitchens on the Georgian obsession with lavish light shows and nocturnal adventures
This earth-shattering work
What a strange thing popular culture is. Back in the 1970s a lot of people might have affected to despise…
As gripping as an Agatha Christie thriller: Shooting Hedda Gabler, at the Rose Theatre, reviewed
The unlovely Rose Theatre in Kingston is a modest three-storey eyesore. The concrete foyer looks like an exercise area on…
What happened to the supermodels of the 1990s?
‘What advice would you give to your younger self?’ has become a popular question in interviews in recent years. It’s…
New Order’s oldies still sound like the future
The intimate acoustic show can denote many things for an established artist. One is that, in the infamous euphemism coined…
The miracle of The Miracle Club is that it does, I promise, end
The Miracle Club, which is about a group of Irish women who travel to Lourdes, has a magnificent cast –…
I watched it so that you didn’t have to: ITV2’s Big Brother reviewed
Big Brother is Nineteen Eighty-Four rewritten by Aldous Huxley. The detail that George Orwell got wrong is that far from…
Proof that Rubens really was a champion of the female sex: Rubens & Women, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery reviewed
‘She is a princess endowed with all the virtues of sex; long experience has taught her how to govern these…
Has VR finally come of age?
VR ‘immersion’ is everywhere in London this autumn, but is it of any value? Stuart Jeffries takes the plunge
That extraordinary mutant masterpiece
It’s been a long time coming, Patricia Cornelius’ My Sister Jill but she’s a playwright whose work demands to be…
A great subject squandered: Golda reviewed
Born in Tsarist Kyiv in 1898, Golda Meir grew up with what she called a ‘pogrom complex’. That perhaps explained…
Shocking: Channel 4’s Partygate reviewed
If there were special awards for Most Subtlety in a Television Drama, Tuesday’s Partygate would be unlikely to win one.…
Godot with gags: It’s Headed Straight Towards Us, at Park200, reviewed
It sounds like a barking-mad student sketch but the final product is marinated in wisdom and maturity. It’s Headed Straight…
