Arts
An awfully long night for a band without any bangers: The National, at Alexandra Palace, reviewed
Over the past few years, the National have become the most important band in modern rock music. The strange thing…
Why everyone should go to life-drawing classes: Claudette Johnson interviewed
While looking at Claudette Johnson’s splendid exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery, I kept trying to pin down an elusive…
Ebullience and majesty: Opera North’s Falstaff reviewed
Opera North has launched a ‘Green Season’, which means (among other things) that the sets and costumes for its new…
Marina Abramovic’s show is only of interest to diehard fans
‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?’ More than 30 years after the Guerrilla Girls…
Stone is the solution to many of our architectural problems
Calvin Po on the revival of building in the solid, sustainable, dependable material that lies readily beneath our feet
His brilliant boggling career
It’s interesting to see that Mel Gibson, no less, is in the blood and violence TV streamer The Continental which…
Striking but not altogether successful: ENB’s Our Voices reviewed
Aaron S. Watkin, an affable bearded Canadian, is the new artistic director of English National Ballet. He arrives from Dresden,…
Arresting visual spectacle and superb fight scenes: Netflix’s One Piece reviewed
What would you say is the most successful comic-book series in history? If you’re thinking Tintin you’re not even close.…
Soapy and sentimental: Ken Loach’s The Old Oak reviewed
Ken Loach has said The Old Oak will be his last film – he’s 87; the golf course probably beckons.…
Enjoyable and informative but where’s the drama? Political Currency reviewed
The first episode of George Osborne and Ed Balls’s new podcast, Political Currency, opened with an old clip of the…
ENO’s Peter Grimes shows a major international company operating at full artistic power
In David Alden’s production of Peter Grimes, the mob assembles before the music has even started – silhouetted at the…
The splendour of Edinburgh’s new Scottish galleries
Claudia Massie on the spectacular new galleries that showcase the best of Scottish art for the first time
The dazzling classic The Red Shoes has several unfashionable lessons for us today
Seventy-five years after its release, Powell and Pressburger’s dazzling, much-loved classic is more timely than ever, says Robin Ashenden
Wagner rewilded: Das Rheingold, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
In Northern Ireland Opera’s new Tosca, the curtain rises on a big concrete dish from which a pair of eyes…
Cheesy skit: A Mirror, at the Almeida Theatre, reviewed
The playwright Sam Holcroft likes to toy with dramatic conventions and to tease her audiences by withholding key information about…
Menacingly entertaining thriller, despite the clichés: A Lesson reviewed
The Lesson is a literary thriller that is occasionally heavy-handed but also menacingly entertaining, plus you get Richard E. Grant…
If you can’t get something out of the songs of Shania Twain, you’re a lost cause
Pop critics routinely make the mistake of assuming the most important acts are the ones copied by the groups they…
In praise of the Festival Song – the four-minute wonder that can sustain a career for decades
As the sun sets on another too-long summer festival season, let us take a moment to reflect on the Festival…
You don’t have to be ‘woke’ to be troubled by the Fitzwilliam Museum’s links to slavery
What happens when a museum outlives the worldview of its founder? For publicly funded museums with collections amassed during the…
A Picasso doc that – amazingly – focuses on how great he was
Earlier this year, the Guardian took a break from arguing that ‘cancel culture’ is a right-wing myth to ask the…
Diamond-bright hoot
Oh to be in London with Barrie Kosky calling the shots in the first part of Wagner’s Ring Cycle Das…
Mermaid out of her depth
It’s strange the different strands of culture we constantly negotiate. The Rolling Stones bring out a new album and this…
Rejoice that Hyperion’s impeccable back catalogue is finally available to stream
At the beginning of the 1980s a former ice-cream salesman called Ted Perry drove a London minicab to raise money…
Watch three irascible women screaming at each other: Anthropology, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed
Anthropology is a drama about artificial intelligence that starts as an ultra-gloomy soap opera. A suicidal lesbian, Merril, speaks on…
