Arts
One for hardcore Tennessee Williams fans only: The Two Character Play reviewed
It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…
What really went on at Britain's Bikini Atoll?
Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death
I laughed quite a lot when I shouldn’t have: Old reviewed
The biggest challenge in reviewing M. Night Shyamalan’s Old lies in describing its central idea without making the film sound…
Swaggerific display of pumping chests and crotch-grabbing struts: NYDC's Speak Volumes reviewed
Last week I attended a dance performance in person for the first time since March last year. If you’d asked…
Springtime for Putin: Grange Park's The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko reviewed
Alexander Litvinenko lies in a London hospital, dying of polonium poisoning. That photograph from 2006 haunts the memory: the medical…
Floods you with fascinating facts: Trees A Crowd reviewed
Listening to Trees A Crowd, a podcast exploring the ‘56(ish) native trees of the British Isles’, solved one of childhood’s…
When did Sunday night TV become so grim? Baptiste reviewed
There was, you may remember, a time when Sunday night television was rather a jolly affair: gently plotted and full…
Rich and strange: Eileen Agar at Whitechapel Gallery reviewed
Heads turn, strangers gawp, matrons tut or look in envy. A man doffs his bowler hat knowing when he is…
The Greeks
What a time of captivity, what a time of plague. The Disney musical Frozen, long delayed by the mammoth Melbourne…
A short history of millionaire composers
Art is supposed to emerge from poverty but extreme wealth does not preclude talent, as the history of composers proves. By Richard Bratby
Quietly devastating: Nowhere Special reviewed
Not one, but two British films this week, one that’s only being screened at the cinema (if you’re brave enough)…
What a comic treat: The Game of Love and Chance at the Arcola reviewed
Lady Sylvia is a gorgeous aristocrat whose hand is sought by the charming Dorante whom she has never met. To…
Could she be the new Sade? Celeste at Union Chapel reviewed
Some years ago, when I was the music editor of a newspaper, I called a number of historians of black…
The best theatre podcasts
All the world’s on stage again so where to go to for insight into what to see and why? Podcasts,…
The techniques of totalitarianism are still fully in play today
How to Become a Tyrant(Netflix) is ideal history TV for Generation No Attention Span. Presented in six bite-sized chunks by…
Zips along with enormous vim: Malcolm Arnold's The Dancing Master reviewed
Malcolm Arnold composed his opera The Dancing Master in 1952 for BBC television. It never appeared, the problem being the…
Full of masterpieces: Paula Rego at Tate Britain reviewed
The Victorian dictum ‘every picture tells a story’ is true of Paula Rego’s works, but it’s only part of the…
Martin Clunes
Just as the lockdown imprisons the people of Sydney those in Canberra have had the chance to see that exhilaration…
Opera Australia’s production of Otello
Lockdown must be making me irritable; an article during the week really got me going. It concerns two forthcoming productions…
Looks lovely if nothing else: Craig and Bruno's Great British Road Trips reviewed
To its huge credit, ITV has managed to find perhaps the last two television celebrities who’ve never before been filmed…
Joan Eardley deserves to be ranked alongside Bacon and de Kooning
Claudia Massie on the unjustly neglected artist Joan Eardley, who deserves to be ranked alongside Auerbach, Bacon and de Kooning
Lame and formulaic: Black Widow reviewed
Black Widow is the latest Marvel film and although I’d sworn off these films a while ago, due to sheer…
A shrill, ugly, tasteless muddle: Romeo & Juliet reviewed
What shall we destroy next? Romeo & Julietseems a promising target and the Globe has set out to vandalise Shakespeare’s…
Wallace Shawn's Designated Mourner feels like watching the news
Pity the aesthete, the flâneur and the opera-goer. Those who find the contents of their own heads so dull and…
The real death of rock
What would a rock band have to do now to be seen as heralding the future? Twenty years ago, it…
