Arts
Hockney’s Rake’s Progress remains one of the supreme achievements
With Glyndebourne’s The Rake’s Progress, the show starts with David Hockney’s front cloth. The colour, the ingenuity, the visual bravura:…
Bert Newton
And so the world finally bestirs itself in the direction of going out because it’s now allowable. A young millennial…
The unseen Victoria Wood
For a few years now I have been living with Victoria Wood. That sounds all wrong, obviously, and yet no…
Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol
Gossipy, amusing, a little vain, Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol, says Martin Gayford
The best podcasts about money
Stories about money are never about money. They are about pain, about family, about atrocity, about luck, about health, about…
The sound of a hunch coming good
Graeme Thomson talks to the cult singer Joan Wasser about the robotic nature of pop, finding salvation in songwriting and Tony Allen
Lumpily scripted and poorly plotted: Cry Macho reviewed
Clint Eastwood is 91; Cry Macho may well be his last film. Or maybe not. He has, after all, been…
Profound and original and unashamedly religious: Midnight Mass reviewed
I was turned on to Midnight Mass by Ricky Gervais who raved about it in one of his social media…
An affectionate exercise in comic sabotage: Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) reviewed
Let’s be honest. Jane Austen is popular because War and Peace doesn’t fit inside a handbag. Austen’s best-loved novel, Pride…
The Crucible
Sometimes you think the Apocalypse doesn’t go away. It just takes new and frightful forms. No sooner was the lockdown…
The tyranny of the visual
Stuart Jeffries on the tyranny of the visual
The genius of Caveh Zahedi
365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die is a podcast that experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi started…
A blisteringly bonkers first episode: Doctor Who – Flux reviewed
BBC1 continuity excitedly introduced the first in the new series of Doctor Who as ‘bigger and better than ever’ —…
A riveting cheese dream of a film: Spencer reviewed
Go see Pablo Larrain’s Spencer, which stars Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, and the next day you will wonder: did…
Like Alan Bennett but less funny: 'night, Mother at Hampstead Theatre reviewed
’night, Mother is a two-hander that opens like a comedy sketch. ‘I’m going to kill myself, Mama,’ says Jessie. She’s…
This is how G&S should be staged: ENO's HMS Pinafore reviewed
Until 1881, HMS Pinafore was the second-longest-running show in West End history. Within a year of its première it had…
In 1980s Bennington it was a badge of dishonour not to have slept with your professor
It is incredibly hard to convey the fleeting invincibility and passionate self-significance that we feel on the cusp of adulthood.…
Oh dear, Abba’s new album is a bit of a dog: Voyage reviewed
Time has been very kind to Abba. No one back in the 1970s thought of them as geniuses. But they've even lost the talent for writing memorable tunes
Keith Michell
So the lockdowns end, even in Melbourne, and we get a glimpse of what artistic performance may loom in a…
'What do you think the English will say?' Pablo Larrain on his pop horror Diana film
Jasper Rees talks to the Chilean director Pablo Larrain about his new film, Spencer, which makes The Crown look like royalist propaganda
Richly layered and intricate: Royal Ballet's The Dante Project reviewed
Where does the artist end and their work begin? Like 2015’s Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor’s new ballet swirls creator and…
Every MP must see this play: Value Engineering – Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry reviewed
Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry is a gripping, horrifying drama. Nicolas Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor have sifted through the public…
The best podcasts to help you become a better painter
There’s a great documentary film on Netflix at the moment about the late artist Bob Ross, he of the happy…
Exquisite to look at, strangely tense and wholly riveting: Netflix's Passing reviewed
Passing is Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of the Nella Larsen novella (1929) about two biracial women, one of whom chooses to…
Very much NSFW: Jean-Efflam Bavouzet/Quatuor Danel at Wigmore Hall reviewed
‘Drammatico’, wrote César Franck over the opening of his Piano Quintet, and you’d better believe he meant it. The score…
