Arts
Humanity, clarity and warmth: Alice Neel, at the Barbican Art Gallery, reviewed
If you want to be taken seriously as a contemporary painter, paint big. ‘Blotter’, the picture that won the 34-year-old…
The mysterious world of British folk costume
Christopher Howse on the transformative power of folk costume
Aristocratic panache
Last week saw the streaming of the sixth and final episode of Happy Valley, the Yorkshire policier with the great…
What I love about Netflix’s Kleo is that it’s so damned German
I was almost tempted not to watch Kleo because it sounded like so many things I’d seen before: beautiful ex-Stasi…
The unknown German composer championed by Mahler
I was sceptical when the lady on the bus to Reading town centre told me that her father knew Liszt.…
A sex farce reminiscent of Alan Clark’s diaries: Phaedra, at the Lyttelton Theatre, reviewed
Simon Stone claims that his new comedy, Phaedra, draws on the work of Euripides, Seneca and Racine. In fact, the…
What a voice Plath had – stern yet somehow musical, long-vowelled, bear-like: Radio 4’s My Sylvia Plath reviewed
Can you ever truly know a poet? The question arises every time one publishes a collection that looks vaguely confessional.…
Bravely shows that depressed people can be quite annoying: The Son reviewed
For my money – and lots of other people’s – Florian Zeller’s 2020 film The Father was pretty much a…
Down with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!
There is footage on the internet of Robert Smith, lead singer in the Cure, being interviewed on the occasion of…
The musical émigrés from Nazi-Europe who shaped postwar Britain
Halfway up the stairs to the Royal College of Music’s exhibition Music, Migration & Mobility is a map of NW3,…
How Vermeer learnt to embrace the everyday – and transfigured it
Laura Gascoigne on Vermeer’s women
Serious music
The other week this column blithely announced that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra would be performing live that mighty and mightily…
Revival of the fittest
Opera North has begun 2023 with a couple of big revivals, and it’s always rewarding to call in on these…
Best in show
Civilisation has never nurtured more than a handful of front-rank choreographers within any one generation, with the undesirable result that…
His dark materials
Radio works its strongest magic, I always think, when you listen to it in the dark. The most reliable example…
Going Metric
Why aren’t Metric stars? In their native Canada, several of their albums have gone platinum, but the rest of the…
Chatterbox crackdown
A romcom with an irritating title, Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, has opened at the HP Theatre starring Jenna Coleman…
Eight angry women
Women Talking, which has received Oscar nominations for best picture and adapted screenplay, is one of those films that, on…
Joking aside
Nick Hornby’s 2014 novel Funny Girl was both a heartfelt defence and a convincing example of what popular entertainment can…
Unmissable: Donatello – Sculpting the Renaissance, at the V&A, reviewed
‘Donatello is the real hero of Florentine sculpture’, so Antony Gormley has proclaimed (hugely though he admires Michelangelo). It’s hard…
Wars of the roses
Matthew Wilson on the female medieval poet who rescued the flower’s reputation
Snatches of poignancy
Some decades ago when David Foster Wallace was proceeding to write the great confounding masterpiece of his generation Infinite Jest…
Classy but constrained by its video game origins: Sky’s The Last of Us reviewed
The Last of Us is widely being hailed as the best video game adaptation ever. Maybe. But it’s still a…
These drag queens haven’t a clue how banal their problems are: Sound of the Underground, at the Royal Court, reviewed
Sound of the Underground is a drag show involving a handful of cross-dressers who spend the opening 15 minutes telling…
