Arts
‘Damned spot’ of blood keeps appearing
People have always fiddled with Shakespeare. Nahum Tate did not give King Lear a happy ending because he was a…
A masterful magnificence
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? culminates the great stretch of American drama that runs from Tennessee Williams’ The…
Utterly bog-standard: BBC2’s The Turkish Detective reviewed
A partly subtitled show set in Istanbul might sound like a brave departure for a BBC Sunday night crime drama.…
Acceptable for a hangover day: Fly Me to the Moon reviewed
Fly Me to the Moon is a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum set during the 1960s space…
Sparky and often hilarious: Garsington’s Un giorno di regno reviewed
Hang out with both trainspotters and opera buffs and you’ll soon notice that opera buffs are by far the more…
Unmissable – for professors of gender studies: Alma Mater, at the Almeida Theatre, reviewed
Alma Mater is a topical melodrama set on a university campus. The new principal, Jo, (amusingly played by Justine Mitchell)…
The beauty of pollution
On the back of the British £20 note, J.M.W. Turner appears against the backdrop of his most iconic image. Voted…
Why I fell out of love with Wagner
It’s four years since I gave up opera criticism. The pandemic had struck, I had hit a significant birthday, and…
Are the best young ballerinas being lured away from dance by sport?
As graduation ceremonies go, the Royal Ballet School’s annual matinée ranks among the most spectacular. It takes place at the…
No hint of vanity
The new documentary I Am: Celine Dion which just started on Amazon Prime Video and in cinemas begins with Maria…
An ensemble achievement that dances and sparkles: Glyndebourne’s Giulio Cesare reviewed
A classic opera production ages like wine. When David McVicar’s staging of Handel’s Giulio Cesare first opened at Glyndebourne in…
Sly, sexy and smart: The Nature of Love reviewed
The Nature of Love is a French-Canadian film about an academic who considers herself happily married but then encounters a…
How we became addicted to vaping
For those of us with a poor grasp of time, who can still recall when a night at the pub…
If you can stand the stress, The Bear is still possibly the best thing on TV
The Bear has been called ‘the most stressful thing on TV’ and I think that’s probably a fair description. It’s…
The mesmerising Olympic posters designed by the likes of Warhol and Whiteread
You could be forgiven for assuming that the citizens of Paris weren’t exactly bursting with joy at the prospect of…
Forget monetary policy, the Bank of England’s greatest crime was architectural
In 1916 the Bank of England committed what Nikolaus Pevsner was to call the greatest architectural crime to befall London…
Camila Cabello’s new album presents an existential threat to songwriting
It is always interesting to observe the ways in which pop stars try to negotiate first growing up, and then…
Complain all you like but Glastonbury has delivered the goods again
There’s yet to be a Glastonbury line-up that hasn’t provoked a chorus of naysaying. Refrains like ‘looks rubbish. I wouldn’t…
Morally repugnant: Boys From the Blackstuff, at the Garrick Theatre, reviewed
Yosser Hughes is regarded as a national treasure. He first appeared in 1982 in Alan Bleasdale’s TV drama, Boys from…
A weird, dark labyrinth
What a strange experience it is for an ageing innocent adult to find himself in the plush and state of…
The genius of Frederick Ashton
To defend my case that Frederick Ashton ought to be acknowledged as one of the major artistic geniuses of the…
‘Punishingly dull – but the crowd loved it’: Next to Normal, at Wyndham’s Theatre, reviewed
The Constituent is a larky show about violence against female politicians. A strange subject for a comedy. Anna Maxwell Martin…
‘Left me stunningly bored’: Brat, by Charli XCX, reviewed
Grade: C I don’t doubt the ingenuity. The mastery of a technology which now exists as a substitute for melody,…
